Sexual Identity In Giovanni's Room By James Baldwin

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

Adolescence is often a confusing time where people still have elements of childhood, but they are beginning to enter the world of adults. People end up stuck between two points in life and feel that they can not quite fit into either. In J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, sixteen year old Holden Caulfield experiences the contradicting feelings of being a teenager while he is alone in New York City. He masquerades as an adult and his experiences represent various aspects of being an adult. He tries to act grown-up and engage in adult life, but at the same time he resists it and tries to hold onto the way things are. Salinger explores the image of adulthood using symbols. Symbols of adulthood hold for Holden a certain longing and resentment as he struggles with the turmoil of adolescence.

Throughout the 1950’s, the United States belonged to the Leave It To Beaver era. Families were structured around a strong, hard working father and a wonderful homemaker mother. Children were brought up with solid ideologies on what society expects from them and were warned about living a different and dangerous life. Only one-year separates Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room from there publishing dates during this decade of unwavering beliefs. These texts were seen as extremely controversial during their time due to their themes of homosexuality. Sexual orientation was an awkward topic during such a “to the book” time period and these texts pushed the limits, making them remarkable and memorable works. Both Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin explore the panic men experience while trying to comprehend what sexual orientation they belong to and highlight the masculine gay man. These texts also examine the woman’s role in the mist of it all.

The description of their relationship draws on the language of navigation and discovery. She is seen as “undiscovered country” p.32 and David is a “battered vessel”. The narrator suggests there is no map for love

In “The Myth of Homosexuality” by Christine Downing, there is the discussion of homosexuality and its meaning over the years. Downing begins the article by stating how a myth has classified women-on-women and men-on-men relationships to fall under the same term of homosexuality, but there is much deeper understanding to it than that. The classification under one word has caused a lot of shaping concerning how they are viewed or how they view themselves. In order to look past the surface of what defines the myth, Downing states that we must start with the culture’s myth and it’s origin.

In the novel, he states that he likes to imagine alternate realities of what happened in the past. Overall David did not live up to the "masculinity" of his grandfather but has conformed to his own standards that would be accepted by today's society as being a

The bedroom can be substituted for the female body, and thereby represents "the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture" ("Pandora" 63). Concealing sexuality but also reifying the female body as and in the forbidden space of the bedroom, John invokes spatial and bodily associations of enclosure and mystery.

A privilege is any unearned advantage available to a particular person or group of people. As McIntosh had described, privileges are invisible, weightless knapsacks containing special provisions, maps and passports (White Privilege). The privileged rarely see themselves as the oppressor, but instead take the majority of their rights for granted, which protects them from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence. In the following paper, I describe the hardships associated with disability and homosexuality through the perspective of Connie Panzarino, as portrayed in her memoir The Me In The Mirror. I will then relate her experiences to class readings and describe how able-bodied and heterosexual privileges are threats to those who do not fit into either category.

Stephen King employs colorful visual imagery, personification, and vulgar, dominating diction to display Jack’s failure to maintain aspects of his masculinity such as expectations to provide a sense of safety and a proper shelter for his family as well as the desire to remain the head of his household during the resurgence of the wasps. King utilizes vivid color and visual imagery to highlight Jack’s deficiency in terms of masculinity. King states, “[Wendy] took a coloring book off [Danny’s] worktable and slammed it down on the wasp. It left a viscous brown smear” (191). The smear left by the wasp is depicted as brown, a very opaque color with a dirty and polluted connotation.

Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris both live hard lives with two very different disabilities. They each share a story about their disease and although it is within the same topic, their stories are very different. These differences will be noticed in the writing style, the use of humor, society’s perception and their transformation as individuals. On Being a Cripple Nancy is a loving mother and friend suffering from Multiple Sclerosis.

In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Hella struggles with a way to experience her femininity without defining herself in relation to men. She is David’s fiancée who is away in Spain for most of the novel. After returning to David, Hella experiences a yearning both for home and to become what she feels is a real woman, which she thinks that only David can provide her. Relying on David to give her the feeling of being a woman, Hella writes to David frequently about what she feels their life together would be like. For Hella, the feeling of home is inexplicably tied to being a woman and the vulnerability she feels when she is with David, or with a man.

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

Throughout history, definitions of sexuality within a culture are created and then changed time after time. During these changes, we have seen the impact and power one individual or group can have over others. In the Late Nineteenth Century into the Early Twentieth Century, we see multiple groups of people and or authorities taking control over the idea of sex and how they believe society is being impacted by sex. At this point in time, society had groups of people who believed they had the power to control how society as whole viewed and acted upon sex. Those particular groups and ideas changed many lives and the overall definition of sexuality within that culture.

Devastated by the loss of Fermina, Florentino spends months sick and unable to go on with his life. As the years go by since his rejection by Fermina, he finds himself in a web of love affairs with women from all walks of life. Although he goes against his rule that he must remain a virgin until he can finally be with Fermina, he never marries or has children. The scars of losing his first and only love makes it impossible for Florentino to ever settle down, get married, have a family, or even a stable job. In comparison, David Lambert, the main character of the novel A Scientific Romance , also fails to progress in life after the loss of his true love. David’s life seems to deteriorate when he loses his lover Anita. He later spends years searching for her around the globe. It becomes clear that David has never moved on from loving Anita as he says, “… sail back to Anita, to my parents; restore truncated lives, rebuild my own.” (Wright 62). His only hope to ever return to being happy will only happen if he can go to the past and be with Anita and his family. David, much like Florentino, spends his life consumed with thoughts of Anita. He never marries or has children and lives life lonely and miserable. The loss of both Florentino and David’s only true loves prevent them from developing as individuals.

No person was to promote homosexuality; any promotion was punishable by law. DV8, On the other hand, sought to ignore said bill and continued to present uncompromising ideas. Page 178 of The Male Dancer… also tells of DV8’s 1987 piece My Sex, Our Dance and ‘also challenges homophobia, but in the process presents a bleak and chilling view of male-male relationships’.