Although, even with their efforts to push away from their own history that they have created, a lot of times American immigrants discovered themselves simply gazing into the deep past, David now glances at his disappearing reflection in the blackening window. This darkened past is that of a country in which personalities are lost and rejected, misplaced as immigrants have migrated from their homelands to start a new life, and rejected as the rumble of the majority hushes the voice of the minority. Yet individualities are also created as these new Americans try to carve a space for themselves through self-invention, a notion that would become a stamp of their new country. The growl of the American majority is replied by the voice of Baldwin, a black and gay man, truly exemplifies the pain of the minority to comprehend itself and find its place.
In Giovanni's Room, the dominant American distress is that masculinity will be lost to homosexuality, and David at first responds to this fear by attempting to grip an ideal to earn a role on the inside of this fictional community. From reading the text we can analyze that America began as just only colonies, something that is different than what they originally came from their mother country, a set of colonies that is both a part of and separate of what it originated from. It both held inside and outside status, besieged
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contained. Rather now, reality is now confronting you, bringing into light the true enemy; the person you truly fear, yourself. Such internal struggle is seen within James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room, though Baldwin’s depiction of the protagonist David and his escape from America in hope to discover another identity that he associates with, even if the association goes against his internal desires. Baldwin’s use of self-deception and the internal struggle of the man within his novel demonstrates the
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When he was in the France, he fell in love with Giovanni and stayed in his room together. When David and Giovanni talked about sexuality, they referred to their own places. They used comparison between America and Europe, and talked about the difficulties they had to come through. However, David could not create his real sexual identity in the America, but also he couldn’t be sure of it even though he was in Europe. David tried not to love him since he
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