James Baldwin grew up a neglected child. He was a black man in a white man's world -- gay man who was trying to make his mark in the world of literature. "You write of your experiences," James Baldwin once said. James Baldwin wrote to overcome the barriers in his life.
To better understand the thematic importance of Paris and the room in this book, we need to begin with the author. Baldwin, who was born at Harlem Hospital to an unmarried, 20-year-old woman, was teased as a child because he was small and effeminate. When he was three, his mother married David Baldwin, a laborer and Baptist preacher who was often violent and abusive to his family. At age 24, James Baldwin was scared and unhappy about the way blacks were treated in America. He had only $40 in his pocket, but he escaped to Paris where he did much of his writing. His passion for issues regarding race and sexually prompted him to write and publish more than 22 books of essays, fiction, poetry and drama.
James Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956. This was his second novel and it addresses the theme of homosexuality in Paris. The book's main character David is in love with both a man and a woman and is dealing with his own inability to express and act upon his feelings. What better setting than Paris to deal with the central theme of love.
David is afraid of loving and being loved and questions the morality of homosexuality. "But I am a man," David cried, "a man." What do you think can happen between us?" Yet, he falls in love with Giovanni in Paris while Hella is traveling in Spain. Amid all of the inner turmoil that the central character suffers, Baldwin depicts the haunting grandeur of Paris. Emotionally charged, the book will surely make an impact almost at once.
Baldwin' candid look at sexual issues made him one of the first major American novelists in the 1950s to examine the taboo subject of sexual love between two men. Based on a time in his life when his sexuality was questionable, Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room. Reality was interwoven with fiction throughout the book.
Paris is significant because James Baldwin stated in an interview with henry Louis gates Jr. that he went to Paris because his writing was inhibited by his role as a black man in America. He said, "I had to go somewhere where I could learn that is was possible for me to thrive as a writer." Of course, this now made Baldwin not only a black, gay writer but an expatriate as well. Paris because his haven and provided him with the backdrop for a novel that explores human emotion, particularly love and self-expression.
Baldwin wrote from the soul, which is why Giovanni's Room is such a haunting piece of literature. Just as occurs in the novel, Baldwin lost a close male friend, whom he had once loved. He also reflects about life and denies his true sexuality and falls prey to societal dictates and marries a woman. Dealing with his sexuality became an internal battle for the prolific writer. But through his characters, David and Giovanni, Baldwin was able to invent two men who represented the anguish and helplessness that he at times himself experienced. Baldwin explored a man who was denying his real feelings through David. Like David, he needed a way to cope with his fear of being gay and his inability to accept another man's love.
Giovanni, on the other hand was the antithesis of David. A man who was comfortable loving another man and expressing his feelings but still afraid to be hurt. "If you can not love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody."
Giovanni's Room is at its core almost autobiographical. Baldwin's theme testifies throughout the book to his own inner turmoil. When David makes love to Giovanni, he keeps telling himself, "It's nothing, it's just the flesh."
Dirtiness is used symbolically the novel portraying what David felt about himself and his homosexual tendencies. More than likely, these were feelings that were shared by Baldwin. Combine this with the symbolism of a room, Giovanni's room, representing being trapped by homosexuality. Like human being, rooms come in a variety of shapes and colors. They are a natural place of...
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