Comparing Love in Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, and Another Country

Baldwin’s first three novels -Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, and Another Country-boil over with anger, prejudice, and hatred, yet the primary force his characters must contend with is love. Not meek or mawkish but "...something active, more like fire, like the wind" (qtd. in O'Neale 126), Baldwin's notion of love can conquer the horrors of society and pave the way to "emotional security" (Kinnamon 5). His recipe calls for a determined identity, a confrontation with and acceptance of reality, and finally, an open, committed relationship. Though Baldwin's characters desperately need love, they fail to meet these individual requirements, and the seeds of love they sow never take root and grow to fruition.

Baldwin's fixation with love, especially a love perpetually denied, arises from his past, which colors must of his writings. Baldwin never knew his father. He endured the brunt of his stepfather's abuse simply because he was not his true son. Similarly, Baldwin's characters never receive familial love and are cast out, with neither support nor an understanding of love, into a world of hatred. Baldwin never forgot his cold, strict, intolerant stepfather, David Baldwin, and this failed relationship between father and son forms the basis for his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Also fundamental to Baldwin's works is his homosexuality, which plays a predominate role in Giovanni's Room and Another Country. He favors the homosexual characters, who come closest to achieving love, not merely on account of their sexuality, but because they tend to meet more of Baldwin's prerequisites: "In his most elegant formulation, [Baldwin] remarked that the word homosexual might be an adjective, perhaps a...

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...unity." MELUS 10 (1983), 27-31. Rpt. in Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical Essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.

O'Neale, Sondra A. "Fathers, Gods, and Religion: Perceptions of Christianity and Ethnic Faith in James Baldwin." In Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical Essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.

Pratt, Louis H. James Baldwin. Boston: Twayne, 1978.

Rosenblatt, Roger. "Out of Control: Go Tell It on the Mountain and Another Country." In Black Fiction. N.p.: Harvard University, 1974. Rpt. in Harold Bloom ed. James Baldwin. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Standley, Fred L. "James Baldwin: The Artist as Incorrigible Disturber of the Peace." Southern Humanities Review 4 (1970), 18-30. Rpt. in Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical Essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.