Giovanni's Room

Giovanni's Room Rooms often evoke the notion of limited space and time, suffocation and approaching threat. James Baldwin's novel is not an exception to this rule, but confirmation. It is a story about isolation. Rooms symbolize the means for it and (dis)appear every time David "slips, losing balance, dignity, and pride" (109).

The limited space of a room strikes the reader's attention in the very first lines of the book. A skillful voyeur's manner of telling the story complements the notion. The novel starts with a setting of limits "“ beginning carries the result of the whole story and thus restricts reader's expectations for a "˜happy ending.' First lines for me sound like David's cynic voice of warning not to expect the impossible. After all, this is a story about limits and unlived life.

As the title of the book suggests, the symbol of rooms has greatest value in the Giovanni-context.

Joey (TV series)

David Bowie & Band @ Area2 Festival

Napoleon Crossing the Alps

Yet, it will be a mistake to disregard its presence in the scene of David's first experience of "intolerable pain"(11) and joy fused. The night with Joey is a point, at which rooms start to equate efforts of hiding the shame and repulsiveness of David's desire for men behind thick walls. Rooms appear in the role of isolation material for the devastating "vileness"(12), "shame"(12) and "madness"(12), which whirl inside him. Note however, that there is a difference between Giovanni's room and Joey's bedroom. The first one is integral part of what Giovanni is, his love and prison-passion. The second one is simply a bedroom that shares the beauty of tender naked bodies, youth and passion but no deep (terrorizing) feelings.

Giovanni's room does contain and isolate lost dignity and denounce of self. It is not an accident that windows are "closed most of the time"(124) and curtains lack. The thick cover of paint on the window glass is absolute and stronger in "insuring privacy"(124) than a shallow curtain. The white polish evokes the notion of unpolluted; yet, this room is far from "˜white clean.' It contains "all of the garbage" of Paris, which I can speculate is a symbol for pain. It also contains the dirt of "regurgitated life"(126). That is why David is called to change Giovanni by first becoming "a part of Giovanni's room"(127).

This Giovanni's room is the place where David comprehends his love and is terrified of it. It is his chance to stop lying about the true him. Yet, this is a "˜nature' that has no chance to be accepted by society "“ David possesses neither Guillaume's old name, nor Jacques' fortune to buy amnesty from society's death verdict.

The same symbol of room appears also outside the context of love and sex, but it still serves the purpose of trap for shame. David's hospital room is the place where he completely grasps the abyss between father and son "“ "for I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that we never would"(29). Among the whiteness (again) of sheets and at the face of his father's suffering, he decides "to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened"(30) him. Isolating himself among walls and "by not looking at the universe"(30), David stops looking at his own face. He starts denying feelings that stir him.

Understandably, the room symbol never appears in the context of Ella. She is a woman and a man's falling in love with her is the most natural thing according to society canons. There is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no need to hide accepted feelings. There exists no reason to lock them in between impenetrable walls.

Giovanni's Room is a novel that offers a lot of symbols for the reader. The sound of it is somewhat watery, flesh (by itself) substitutes for emptiness, old (world) is opposed to new, "˜home' searches for its meaning. Yet, the most regular (but not bothersome) image is the one of walls and closed space rooms. It depicts discrimination both in terms of homophobia and self-hatred.

Fremen wearing stillsuits, from David Lynch's Dune...

Jacques-Louis David 006

Giovanni's Room