The protagonist of Giovanni’s Room is David, a young American man. The story follows David as he goes about his regular life while trying to hide his homosexuality, and how running away from himself affects his own psyche. Throughout the story, social pressures on homosexuality and the notion of masculinity have an impact on David’s perception of his own life. In some ways, Giovanni, David’s lover, symbolizes what David wishes to be, and the more he gets away from Giovanni, the further he gets away from himself. This story shows how fleeing from oneself may weaken one’s psyche and have negative results.
The narrative starts with David, who seems dejected as he dwells about the whole experience. The whole plot is comprised of flashbacks that explain the scenario. David symbolizes both societal shame and the desire to comply to social standards. David, while being homosexual, despises the concept of being seen as insufficiently manly; in fact, he is almost obsessed with seeming male. “I knew the sailor saw jealousy and longing in my unguarded eyes; I’d seen it in Jacques’ eyes all the time, and my response had been the same as the man’s.” But even if I could still feel love and he could see it in my eyes, it wouldn’t have helped since compassion for the guys I was forced to stare at was even more terrifying than desire.” On page 59, there is an example of David fleeing his sexuality (Baldwin, pg.59). This comment demonstrates that, despite his attraction for other guys, he is apprehensive about accepting male-male reciprocal love. After World War II, the novel was released in 1956, at a period when gay society was on the increase. Furthermore, since the book is set in France, where homosexuality was more openly permitted, it provides a unique perspective on David. David seems to behave in society as if he were in America, where homosexuality was still regarded as a mental disease prior to the 1973 APA judgment.
David is embarrassed of his homosexuality and avoids and denies it. “And we got along rather well,” David remembers on page 17, “because the life picture I provided my father was exactly the one I most desperately wanted to believe in.” In this comment, David shows his duplicity. His life is a fake, he tells his father. We know David is gay, but society pressure, or at least his perception of social pressure, is that being gay should be kept concealed from the public. Page 43 shows his sexual inhibition (Baldwin, pg.17). “Except I couldn’t open the door, and it was too late to do anything but weep.” “Everything in me yelled No! but the sum of me moaned Yes,” he said as he brought me close to him. In this case, Giovanni is ahead of David. David states that his intelligence warns him not to make the sexual move on him. Interesting, considering being in France should make him more comfortable admitting his sexuality. Although he marries Hellen, it is evident that he does not love her, and that he is marrying her for his own personal reasons.
In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, David is a straight homosexual man. Because he wants to be with males, he loses touch with how he feels with all four of his lovers, male and female. In his quest for significance, he kills every connection he has ever had. To establish his sexuality, David deceives himself into believing that his connection with men is love, but in reality it is an act of passion, and he fails to sustain any solid relationship with his lovers. David’s relationships with the women he meets are unstable since they are based on desire rather than love. David’s passion is to establish his sexuality. David is aware of this and uses Sue and Hella to create a heterosexual facade, only completing “acts of love” to maintain the illusion. His sexual cravings are satiated by ladies when he meets Sue. Affectionate remarks like “small breasts and a large behind… [wearing] tight blue pants” lead to David “mentally [taking] off all her clothes” (95).
David views her as a chance to satisfy his sexual urge and prove his heterosexuality by mentally undressing her from the minute they meet. David seizes the opportunity and approaches Sue. “What I did with Giovanni could not possibly be more unethical than what I [am] about to do with Sue,” David thinks to himself, yet he goes forward with his plan nevertheless (99). Preparing to approach Sue was “a chore of effort, a job that had to be done in a memorable manner” (100). David fails to build any form of connection with Sue by referring to her as “a piece of labor” that must be done in a “unforgettable fashion.”.
The best way to describe this book is; that it is about a very depressed and delusional man named David. He is completely unconfident in himself and shuns everything that is true to himself. While living his life as a façade, he slowly creeps into deep depression as he forever runs away from himself. A true tragedy story in its finest.
Work Cited
Baldwin J. Giovanni’s Room (1956) :0-107
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