James Baldwin’s ability to create diverse and multidimensional characters in the stories he writes is what separates him from the other writers of his time. After learning about and researching his background and life struggles, it becomes even more impressive that he chooses to create and develop characters of all races, genders, and ages, as it is clear he draws his motivations from his life encounters both in the US and overseas later in his career. Yet in one of his most famous and controversial books, Baldwin uses the main character in Giovanni’s room and uses his mindset and emotions to describe the struggle he himself went through trying to understand his sexuality during his time spent in Paris. The central question explored in Giovanni’s …show more content…
Both realize that they are attracted to men in the US, and both later go to Paris in part to attempt to understand their sexuality and come to peace with it. Mae Henderson also notes this correlation and recognizes David as a recreation of Baldwin in his essay James Baldwin: Expatriation, Homosexual Panic, and Man’s Estate. Henderson notes the absence of black characters in the novel, and recognizes that Baldwin uses the lack of race to place an emphasis on the sexual crises that both men must have gone through. David becomes the literary counterpart of Baldwin exploring what it is to be a man without regard to race, and what it is to be homosexual, “actual geographical expatriation freed Baldwin to interrogate the complexities of his own identity as writer, as American, and as homosexual, outside the sexually and politically repressive climate of postwar America” (Henderson 313). Both David and Baldwin feel that they cannot find internal satisfaction in America, and Baldwin picks Paris for both himself and David to remove the distraction of race and racism and focus on the dilemma of sexuality and sexual …show more content…
Most the time David spends with Giovanni is full of both love and deceit. Just like with Joey, it becomes clear that David’s infatuation with Giovanni is one of genuine attraction, and not just lust. Yet once again after David has sex, he begins to feel ashamed and mortified being in Giovanni’s presence, “With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots” (Baldwin 288). David knows that the problem stems from his inability to be honest with not just everyone he interacts with, but also himself. Baldwin spends the following couple of pages describing the room that he and Giovanni are laying in after sex. David describes the room to be very disorganized and dirty, a place rather not fit to be in. This very detailed description of Giovanni’s room of course is not describing the room at all, but rather the mixture of conflict and emotions currently in David’s head. Baldwin of course was very outgoing and social during his time in Paris, and it is not difficult to imagine him in a very similar situation having just slept with another man, and wrestling with his own emotions the next morning. The novel is titled Giovanni’s Room because David’s emotions during the time he spends in that room is what drives the rest of the story moving forward, and the fact that he cannot come to