“Giovanni’s Room” was initially advised to be burned. The classic was almost discarded due to the tense political climate under McCarthyism in the 1950s, as well as the hostile reaction to queer fiction depictions. But, a world without Baldwin’s tense and necessary prose would have been a tragic existence. “Giovanni’s Room” directly explores the formidability of perception, both internal and external. David, an American in Paris, navigates his queerness and attraction to Giovanni, an Italian bartender. In the aftermath of their tragic relationship, David recalls their downfall and the growth of his desire to leave the cocoon of Giovanni’s room. There is regret, desire, but more importantly, deep sorrow for David’s static nature. Although “Giovanni’s Room” is considered an analysis of disillusionment and the relationship between homosexuality and socioeconomic factors, the most compelling theme of this novel is David’s devastating relationship with perception.
Who David is when he arrives at Paris, or rather who he admits he was in his reflection, is substantially who he remains when he leaves. He says he went to France to “find himself” only to realize that “the self [he] was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which [he] had spent so much time in flight.” From his first sexual encounter as a boy, he has come face-to-face with a fundamental notion of his identity. In the morning after sleeping with Joey, his childhood best friend, he imagined his family’s and his friends’ reactions. The interaction, vulnerable and real, left intense feelings of fear and shame. This initializes David’s repression of selfhood. He seemed determined to look unknowably at his reflection. Disallowing even his father to know him, he describes it as being “in full flight from him.” But soon, David realizes that he was in full flight from himself, and it is this devastation that traps him in his body. His interaction with the world, as with us all, begins and ends with his interaction with the self.
“Giovanni’s Room” does symbolize a secluded trapping for David, but a retreat and escape for Giovanni. Giovanni aroused the dormancy within David, the real David. It seems that because of his incessant commitment to being constantly on the run from himself, what remains is a vague nothingness. And with this, he is unable to see. Giovanni describes David’s gaze as “though [he] did not see me.” Even David’s desire for Giovanni is directed or channeled into a desire for anyone. Their bond holds no sense of individualism or specificity; there is only general vagueness, where David is determined to let nothingness define him. He is unable to tether himself to a stagnant post. He resents Giovanni, but his deep repression leads to his resentment of the female form.
The very masculinity David learns to despise becomes what he ultimately craves. Is this what happens when one refuses to be perceived, even by oneself? He loses what he is, unable to come to a conclusion. He detaches his body from his soul, and his soul from his spirit. With this constant shedding, what remains? Giovanni explicitly detaches towards the end as he looks in the mirror. He refers to his body as “the body” — “the incarnation of a mystery.” He relents: “I do not know what moves in this body, what this body is searching. It is trapped in my mirror as it is trapped in time, and it hurries toward revelation.” As the body becomes a stranger to him, what is inside the body becomes distant. David is not only self-loathing, but self-denying. Self-ignoring. The story doesn’t end in a revolutionary change, but David finally realizes his repression, and this counts towards progress, or at least obliterates his previous claims of confusion.
This tether of perception to identity continues in the association of femininity. Hella, David’s girlfriend and later fiancée, becomes a refreshing voice of womanhood, as contrasted with Giovanni’s and David’s criticism of femininity. As Hella travels across Europe, it seems as if she aims to find herself, asserting her independence away from David. But, in the end, she decides “[she] couldn’t be free until [she] was attached… to someone.” This, she says, is the reality of being a woman. Because she is committed to David, she “can have a wonderful time complaining about being a woman. But [she] won’t be terrified that [she is not] one.” And when David begins to pull away because of his guilt and engulfing shame, she pleads with him to “let [her] be a woman.” There is a requirement here, for Hella, that being desired brings the security of femininity. We see the influence of recognition and perception solidifying her identity. She feels she cannot be a woman without a man. Or at least, she can be satisfied that she is a woman when she is attached to a romantic partner. Hella and David need the tethering of perception.
This might be true for all of us. Although the recognition we might need differs, the need for recognition — to be perceived — remains the same. The difference between David and Hella is that Hella acknowledges the need for this tether. David, however, refuses to be what he is. He asserts that he “long[s] to crack [the] mirror and be free” but he has yet to realize that one cannot escape the body. He desires to be free from himself, but that is not possible. Because he doesn’t accept this, one wonders if he is only doomed to be lost in the groundless chasm of a vagabond. Without a home and without a self.
