Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

Story Summary:

James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room tells the story of a young man, David, and his struggle with identity, masculinity, and sexuality; David moves to Paris and enters into a confusing relationship with an Italian man, Giovanni, while simultaneously harboring a long distance relationship with Hella, who he intends to marry.

Reflections:

In Giovanni’s Room, the word ‘darkness’ is predominantly accompanied with a very negative concept in which a gleam of light occasionally tries to break through to offer a small amount of hope, however ineffective. When the darkness becomes overwhelming, the characters sometimes attempt to produce their own light to alleviate the pain. David and Giovanni struggle to escape the severe depths of the darkness, despite the small amount of protection it offers them. In the end, David is left struggling to find light and Giovanni ultimately succumbs to the darkness.

Throughout the novel, David often tries to flee the darkness, though it accompanies him wherever he goes. ‘The dark’ often represents sexual encounters he views as shameful, as it is used to describe both polygamous and ‘dirty’ homosexual relationships as well as his short rendezvous with Sue, during which he says, “Then it was over, and the dark, tiny room rushed back. And I wanted only to get out of there” (100). David not only looks for a way to escape the dark, he also tries to ignore it. Jacques points out that embracing the dark would be less shameful than fleeing it, saying, “Think… of the men who have kneeled before you while you thought of something else and pretended that nothing was happening down there in the dark between your legs” (56). For David, the darkness is a representation of all things shameful and discriminatory, and yet, although he tries to escape to artificial light, it offers him a strange sense of protection. Perhaps David’s biggest concern is how he is viewed in the public eye, and what happens in the “dark” protects him from his worst fear. When it was suggested that he drunkenly flirted with another man, David says, “My memory of that night was, happily, very dim” (27). Here, the darkness of his memory acts as a shield, as the darkness shields his ‘shameful’ actions from the public. And yet, although the darkness is a temporary cover-up to the public, David tries to find light to cover up the darkness for himself. He often lights cigarettes in “dark” situations, which creates a tiny amount of light and offers him a small escape from the darkness. After his encounter with Sue, he tells her to keep a candle in the window. David finds a way to create temporary “light and safety,” but is still consistently plagued by the darkness (104).

Giovanni similarly struggles with the dark, and uses David as his own shield. On page 88, David says that, “Though Giovanni smiled his humble, grateful smile and told me in as many ways as he could find how wonderful it was to have me there, how I stood, with my love and my ingenuity, between him and the dark” (88). Similarly to David, Giovanni is afraid of the dark, however, once David is gone, he is unable to create his own light as a replacement shield. On the morning of his death, David reflects, “I suppose they will come for him early in the morning, perhaps just before dawn, so that the last thing Giovanni will ever see will be that grey, lightless sky over Paris” (71). Although he is on the brink of light, Giovanni is unable to escape the darkness. He is killed struggling to flee the darkness after David, his only protection, leaves him without any further light.

Words: 565