Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

The Neapolitan dialect is distinct from the standardized Italian language accessible only to those in elite or educated positions, and the language characters speak signifies their social and educational status. Throughout the novel, the Neapolitan dialect symbolizes the ambivalent relationship Elena has to the violence and vulgarity she experienced in her childhood home.

Because she spends most of her time out of the neighborhood, Elena does not speak in dialect very often in the novel. Elena’s Italian is precious to her, hard-won after many years of study, and dialect is now “disgusting” to Elena, symbolizing the influence of the neighborhood Elena wants to escape. In Chapter 93 during the party at Marcello and Elisa’s, Elena finds herself regressing into dialect out of nervousness and feels that the neighborhood “was imposing its language on me, its mode of acting and reacting” (328). To Elena, dialect signifies more than just her roots; it signifies a violent and vulgar way of living. When Elena finds Dede and Gennaro comparing bodies at the beach, her decision to break the children apart is not motivated by concern over the nature of what they’re doing; Elena reacts when she hears Gennaro speak to Dede in dialect, “coarse words, horribly vulgar words” (307).