Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin came as a surprise to many of his contemporary readers, after all he was a writer known for his work on the African-American experience, and this was a book about a white American man in Paris. The book ,nevertheless, was (mostly) well received and remains a classic text in the LGBTQ+ canon, though Baldwin himself said that the story was “not so much about homosexuality”. Giovanni’s Room elegantly deals with many themes in its short page count: masculinity, the American identity, sexuality, and shame. Shame plays an integral part in the story as we see it permeate through everyone: the older gay men who are burdened and twisted by it, its destructive effects that consume David, but also how Giovanni seems to remain untouched by any shame.
Warning: spoilers ahead
Baldwin stated in an interview that the book is about “what happens if you are so afraid that you finally cannot love anyone”. Throughout the novel, David is constantly confusing his feelings. Sometimes he loves and hates Giovanni all at once, or the love he feels for him will just as easily be applied onto random strangers he passes on the street. The oxymorons of emotions presented in the novel show an inner turmoil that Giovanni has made David expose to himself, there is no turning back now that he has accepted his bisexuality as an immovable fact. This causes him to feel a deep hatred and love for Giovanni, for showing him passion and for bringing to the surface a shame that he will have to hold on for an eternity. The idea of David being haunted by his desire can be seen as he ponders his fate once their inevitable (at least in his mind) separation happens: “Would I, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenues, into what dark places?” As their relationship draws to a close, the pair have an argument where Giovanni cuts right to the bone of what plagues David. He tells him that “You know very well […] what can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.” Everything about how David was raised, his American-ness, his masculinity puts him in him fear of not being perceived as manly enough. He cannot let himself be with Giovanni, two men in a relationship is against his notion of manhood. He won’t allow himself to be dominated by Giovanni the way he would like to be, the same way Hella wishes her life to be dominated by a man, because once again, it would betray the toxic masculinity he has been bred into. David is so terrified of admitting any of these feelings he truly has for Giovanni and his desires that he cannot even feel sorrow for the love he has lost. He remarks as he leaves Giovanni’s room that “One of these days I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry.” He never does.
Contrary to David’s all-consuming self-loathing for his bisexuality, Giovanni does not seem to have any qualms about who he is. This is seen in how he contrasts with darkness. The act of gay sex in the novel is associated in David’s mind with the dark, it is gloomy and dirty and shameful. But Giovanni is the opposite, a beacon of brightness. He is “sat in the sun” as they eat together, and once the whole affair has been laid to rest, he remains in David’s memory as a man who has “all of the light of that gloomy tunnel trapped around his head.” In a bar so crowded by secrecy and shame, Giovanni is the exception. This is because he views their time together as bound by love, not just some mechanical process. It stretches into lazy afternoons strolling through Paris and dinners and time spent together the way heteronormative couples might, not confined to “five minutes […] in the dark.” He is not so much proud as comfortable in who he is. David feels a “ferocious excitement which had burst in me like a storm” when they first meet. He is entranced by him, and how different he is compared to the boys who hope to get a meal out of these older men. This openness and certainty within Giovanni that he and David are together, acts as a shield protecting David, where he too can almost shake off the shame following him around every corner of Paris and simply enjoy his time with him. Even at the end of Giovanni’s life, it is not lead with shame. He may change his mannerisms to please Guillaume, but it is only what he must do to survive. While shame has swallowed David whole and caused their separation, the last time they look at each other in Giovanni’s room, it is still with “the morning light” filling the air. Giovanni remains unabashedly in love with David.
Perhaps, most poignant of all in Baldwin’s commentary on shame, is the directness and bittersweetness through which it is addressed by Jacques, when David first meets Giovanni. He tells David that without loving unashamedly, his being with Giovanni “will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his.” This, I believe, is the key message of the book. It is where Giovanni and David stand at odds, and it provides insight into the wistful and sorrowful lives of (older) gay men at the time, that David cannot seem to comprehend because his vision is so clouded by prejudice and internalized hatred. Jacques is old now and played it “safe” for too long, the shame eating away inside of him all these long years. It has twisted him, and how he views his homosexuality: he spends his money on younger men, hangs around bars, but perhaps worst of all he is self-aware. There is no escape for him from the perceived dirtiness of it, he is trapped “forever and forever and forever” in his internalized homophobia that he has been conditioning into himself for so long. The dire warning, but also forceful message he gives David, that “if only he would try”, is that much more bittersweet. As the reader already knows, David will stray down the wrong path, succumbing to fear and shame instead of choosing to “love him and let him love you.”
