James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room: Function of Parents in the Identity

Struggle James Baldwin's novel, Giovanni's Room presents the struggle of

accepting homosexuality as one young man's true identity. One way in which

Baldwin presents this issue is through the character David and the forces of

his father and dead mother. David's father has an idealized vision of his son as

rough and masculine which leads David to reject his homosexual identity. He

feels his homosexuality inhibits him from becoming the rough and masculine

man his father desires. David's father fuels his son's struggle of accepting

homosexuality as true identity by expressing his ideal son as independent and

rugged; and his looming mother symbolizes David's true homosexual identity

and his inability to escape it. David cannot accept homosexuality as his true

identity because he feels that it goes against the definition of a "man" as

described by his father. David feels this way because he overheard his father

tell his aunt Ellen the following: "All I want for David is that he grow up to be

a man. And when I say a man, Ellen, I don't mean a Sunday school teacher"

(24). Baldwin seems to suggest that his father wants David to have manly

experiences like working hard and exploring the nature of women. He doesn't

want David to become a stiff and sheltered man like a Sunday school

teacher. After hearing his father say that, David feels that he has to hide his

homosexuality. His efforts to hide and deny his homosexuality propel him

farther into his st...

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...gnificant to his struggle to accept his homosexuality as part of his

true identity. His father wants David to grow up to embody rugged manliness,

which leads David to believe that he can't do that as long as he's gay. David

then rejects and pushes his true identity away from himself, which is illustrated

through the images of his dead mother. Finally, feeling the presence of his

mother's spirit, David realizes that he cannot escape from his homosexuality.

He also realizes that he would have spared himself the struggle with his

identity if he knew that he couldn't escape from it: "I think now that if I had

had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only

the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have

stayed at home" (31).