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The Star of David Necklace
The day after Elio has sex with Oliver for the first time, he also has sex with Marzia. Nevertheless, his sexual cravings don’t subside, and so he takes one of Anchise’s peaches and uses it to masturbate, thinking that it looks like Oliver’s “ass.” And yet, he also realizes that the peach looks like a vagina. As such, the fruit itself stands for the fluidity of his sexual desires. “I saw that its reddened core reminded me not just of an anus but of a vagina,” he writes, “so that holding each half in either hand firmly against my cock, I began to rub myself, thinking of no one and of everyone.” A representation of both a man and a woman, the peach helps Elio embrace the unbounded nature of his sexual preferences, allowing him to revel in his flexible desires. What’s more, the peach also makes him think of “no one,” a fact that enables him to not only embrace his bisexuality, but also enjoy pleasure in and of itself, regardless of sexual orientation.
The Peach Quotes in Call Me By Your Name
The Call Me By Your Name quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Peach. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 2: Monet’s Berm
Quotes
I don’t know what happened to me at that moment as I kept staring at him, but suddenly I had a fierce urge to cry. And rather than fight it, as with orgasm, I simply let myself go, if only to show him something equally private about me as well. I reached for him and muffled my sobs against his shoulder. I was crying because no stranger had ever been so kind or gone so far for me, even Anchise, who had cut open my foot once and sucked and spat out and sucked and spat out the scorpion’s venom. I was crying because I’d never known so much gratitude and there was no other way to show it. And I was crying for the evil thoughts I’d nursed against him this morning. And for last night as well, because, for better or worse, I’d never be able to undo it, and now was as good a time as any to show him that he was right, that this wasn’t easy, that fun and games had a way of skidding off course and that if we had rushed into things it was too late to step back from them now— crying because something was happening, and I had no idea what it was.
Related Characters:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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The Peach Symbol Timeline in Call Me By Your Name
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Peach appears in Call Me By Your Name. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2: Monet’s Berm
...has two glasses of wine, which make him pleasantly sleepy. He then grabs two ripe peaches and goes upstairs and falls asleep while thinking about Oliver or Marzia walking by the...
(full context)
...to shake the idea from his mind, Elio gets up and takes one of the peaches, presses his thumbs into it, and pushes the pit out the other side. “[I] gently...
(full context)
Oliver lowers his mouth to Elio’s penis and finds the “sticky taste” of the peach. Elio tells him what he did and points to the “bruised evidence” on the desk....
(full context)
