In Call Me By Your Name, love is presented as both risky and wonderful. The novel is both a bildungsroman and a love story, so the topic of love as central to the human experience is crucial to the plot and character development. This theme is explored through Elio’s burgeoning self-awareness and is confirmed by Elio’s father’s beliefs about the role of love in life.

When Elio first falls in love with Oliver, he feels sickened by the depths of his own emotions. Each day, Elio vacillates between joy and despair based on what he perceives as Oliver’s warmth or coldness towards him. The highs and lows of these early experiences with Oliver are all-consuming. Elio has a difficult time navigating any day without simultaneously hoping for and dreading Oliver’s presence. This reaction to his extreme feelings for Oliver highlights that love can feel wonderful but also terrifying. The overwhelming nature of love can be an obsessive feeling, but obsessions can feel unmanageable. Still, the lows of Elio’s tortured passion only make the highs of a smile from Oliver feel all the sweeter. Thus, Elio learns that love is risky in its intense passion and pain, but also wonderful.