Giovanni's Room Essay

The association of homosexuality with filth begins in childhood for David and most certainly in his relationship with his father. His identity confusion can be seen from early on as he mentions: “I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me” (Baldwin 16). Indeed, David’s father install in him from the very beginning the notion of a white, heterosexual, masculine American male. He wants his son, whom he addresses as “Butch” to “grow up to be a man” (90) and not “a Sunday school teacher” (15). The “teacher” to which his father refers to can be understood as a threat to masculinity because “the teacher” is almost surely a woman and he wishes only a life of “butch” for his son. This notion surfaces

David's mother got worse and she began to think of new ways to torture David. David was one of a few brothers, but only he was targeted. The other brothers pretended he wasn't even there. There was only one person in the family that still loved David was his father. David’s father would fight for David and would protect him from the mother. But, he would always lose. Whenever David's father went to work, David would get beat. Dave became the scapegoat for his mother's mistakes. David became a slave of the house and did all the chores. If he did not finish his chores with an unreasonable time, he did not receive dinner. David was starved for three days at a time. Once, David got stabbed by his mother for not completing her dishes. Whenever David came back from school his mother forced him to throw up to see if he got any food at school. This happened every

One of my favorite quotes of this story would be on page 303 which says, “Years ago, I truly doubted whether I’d make it out alive. In my former life I had very little. Today, as I stand in my utopia, I have what any person could wish for- a life and the love of my son. Stephen and I are a family.” The reason I like this quote is because all his life, David was looking for a family and love and he finally found it.

David’s mother wanted to leave Montana for several reasons; she wanted David’s father to be fully himself and not do his job just because his father told him to, and for David; she feared for his soul, and his values and

David spends the first two chapters eavesdropping into the conversations of his mother and father. This way of finding information in itself is very juvenile but is the only way. Because of the eavesdropping, the information David hears is interfered by his childish ways for example “part of me said to leave, get away, run now before it’s too late before you hear something you can’t unhear.” This quote displays David’s naïve thinking. The naivety of David is also shown though his feeling towards his Uncle Frank, he sees Frank as the charming, town doctor and loving uncle. In David’s eyes, Frank can do no wrong, and when he does, he along with his father does not believe the allegations, “why are you telling me this” “are you telling me this because I’m Frank’s brother? Because I’m your husband? Because I’m Maries employer? He paused “or because I’m the

James Baldwin’s novel, Giovanni’s Room, follows the protagonist, David, as he embarks on a self-journey to establish an identity, personal and sexual, for himself. David is trapped in an American ideal of masculinity and homosexuality that does not define who he truly is, a homosexual male. David tries to pull away from his true desires and constantly struggles to embrace the heteronormative American life instead of being honest and accepting his true self. Throughout the entire novel, David associates darkness, filth and containment with homosexuality, queerness and different spaces that represent sin. Towards the end of the novel, at the end of his self-journey, David, although not literally contained or confined to Giovanni’s room or other dark spaces, does not truly resolve his issues with his true identity and internally will never truly be free.

David even attempts to pray himself “normal”, saying on page 76, “Please, please, God, let me be like other people. I don’t want to be different. Won’t you make it so that when I wake up in the morning I’ll be just like everyone else, please, God, please!” This passage is distinctly similar to the mentality that gay teens simply need to “pray the gay away”. Another similarity to David specifically is that he is forced out of his home for who he is, a situation which many gay teens face to this day. Finally, both groups of people despise living in hiding of who they are, and long for the day where they can be open about themselves without fear of the consequences. A final major similarity to society today is the use of religion to justify bigotry. The community of Waknuk lives their entire lives in fear of their God, because they have been lead to believe that He is omnipotent and deadly. The government tells them what is moral and what is immoral, twisting the words of God to support their own agenda. The people blindly follow this, abandoning their own ethics for the large part to blindly follow their

At the age of 5 years old, not only did he began to take showers with his father, but when they went to the beach club, his mother bathed him in the shower in the presence of other naked women. By the age of 6 years old, David noticed the power men had over women, “when a male entered the women’s side of the bathhouse, all the women shrieked”. (Gale Biography). At the age of 7 and 8 years old, he experienced a series of head accidents. First, he was hit by a car and suffered head injuries. A few months later he ran into a wall and again suffered head injuries. Then he was hit in the head with a pipe and received a four inch gash in the forehead. Believing his natural mother died while giving birth to him was the source of intense guilt, and anger inside David. His size and appearance did not help matters. He was larger than most kids his age and not particularly attractive, which he was teased by his classmates. His parents were not social people, and David followed in that path, developing a reputation for being a loner. At the age of 14 years old David became very depressed after his adoptive mother Pearl, died from breast cancer. He viewed his mother’s death as a monster plot designed to destroy him. (Gale Biography). He began to fail in school and began an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania. He sets fires,

One of the chapters in Giovanni’s Room reveals how David’s first meeting with Giovanni at a bar turns into a sexual relationship, when they end up sleeping together. During the night, David experiences an illusion about his internal conflict by saying that “with everything in me screaming No! … the sum of me sighed Yes” (Baldwin 64). David’s comment suggests his struggle in his decision to make love with Giovanni. A part of David denies the decision because having sex with Giovanni contradicts his stand on masculinity, but another part of him affirms the decision because he feels an attraction towards Giovanni. This “yes-and-no” comment puts David in a very uncomfortable situation where he feels conflicted between his masculinity and sexuality. Despite his discomfort, David still makes love with Giovanni because David wants to let Giovanni knows about how much he loves and want them to be

In comparison with David, author James Baldwin lived between France and America. Like David in the story, Baldwin grew up in New York City struggling as an African American in a racist country, then he moved to Paris . His identity as

his father and dead mother. David's father has an idealized vision of his son as

Throughout the novel, David, the protagonist is abused and tortured several times by his very own father, Joseph Strorm and his recently discovered Uncle, Gordon. David’s father is a strict believer in his religion and is unyielding on the subject of mutations and blasphemy’s. If anyone neglects to follow his beliefs and rules, he has serious consequences for them, like with David, once Joseph found out that David knows a blasphemy, he immediately subjected to abusing him for answers. David’s father continues to beat him until he receives the information he demands. David has been abused more than once by his father and this is evident when David says, “I knew well enough what that meant, but I knew well too, that with my father in his present mood, it would happened whether I told or not. I set my jaw,

David reacts to the story about the rich man and poor man and he believes that the rich man should have to pay the poor man back.

Instead of self-evaluating himself, David chose the convenient path of being married to a woman he doesn 't even love without much of an internal fight. The social construct of racism also forced affected individuals to choose a path which is convenient or even safe from all the brutality.

Though David represents a seemingly common boy at the time, he has several qualities that make him stand out. However, these character traits are never simply told to us. Instead, the implied author uses David’s actions, decisions, and beliefs to