Giovanni’s Room

Summary: James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room is a story of a man named David who travels to Paris to meet  a strapping young barman named Giovanni who encourages  him to reveal his intense and lustful feelings for men he has been shamefully hiding away for years.

Register: Before I began reading this book I was unsure of what “the room” meant. However, now having read the book I could see the room symbolized a sort of “safe haven” for David and a place to store his shameful feelings. David always had feelings towards men that he never knew how to explain. Prior to traveling to Paris and meeting Giovanni, he had a fiance, Hella. However, there seemed to always be something missing for David. The book opened up with the relationship he had with the young boy named Joey. The two men grew closer to one another and once they finally symbolized what they felt behind closed doors, David immediately showed regret and shame. On page 9 he says,

“I was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame, and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me” (9).

David was so shameful about his actions he committed with Joey and describes it as something happening in him- like his attraction towards men was some sort of disease. He then remembers his night with Joey later on in the book when speaking of his father and states,

“This was certainly my decision made so long ago in Joey’s bed..I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me” (20).

The fact that he felt so embarrassed by his actions with Joey and his feelings towards men shows a lack in character in David. I believe a  man who is truly proud of who he is, regardless of what the times were, stands up for what he believes in. This shame and embarrassment also comes about when he meets Giovanni in the bar in Paris the first night he was there with Jacques.  After him and Giovanni innocently flirted at the bar he once again was overcome with dishonor knowing Jacques witnessed the whole thing. He said,

“Jacques had been a witness. He made me ashamed. I hated him because he had now seen all that he had waited, often scarcely hoping, so many months to see” (42).

It seems David is putting all of his effort towards hiding his feelings from everyone else rather than living in the moment and loving the person he is with. Giovanni is obviously attracted to him as well and is also not ashamed to admit it. I wonder what inside David makes him so afraid to make the leap with Giovanni. Jacques eventually gives him great and  honest advice, “you play it safe long enough and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever-like me” (57). This gave the reader a sense of “seize the day” and to forget what other people think- live for yourself.

Once Giovanni and David began “dating”, if you will, he referred to Giovanni’s room quite often. This is when the whole concept of the “safe haven” came to mind. The room was a place for Giovanni and David to be themselves, a place to keep all of their “shameful” feelings. However, throughout the book you could sense David’s shameful feelings building up and becoming overwhelming. He hated himself for loving Giovanni, but was also deeply and hopelessly in love with him. The quote on page 84 sums up his feelings,

“With the fearful intimations there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots” (84).

This quote was very interesting to me because David could not control his shameful feelings which eventually wound up to be conveyed as hatred towards Giovanni. I find it very interesting that David could build hatred for a person he cared about- hatred caused by his own actions.

The main idea I captured from this reading was the insecurity of homosexuality and the demise it led to. David could not handle his shameful feelings he felt towards Giovanni and actually began resenting him for it. The book ends in David leaving Giovanni and Giovanni’s life going into turmoil. I think it is amazing how the room can convey such strong imagery and symbolize such a powerful place.