African American Review

Saint Louis University

Indiana State University
Dividing the Mind: Contradictory Portraits of Homoerotic Love in Giovanni's Room
Author(s): Yasmin Y. DeGout
Source: African American Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, Fiction Issue (Autumn, 1992), pp. 425-435
Published by: Indiana State University
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Dividing the Mind: Contradictory Portraits of

Homoerotic Love in Giovanni's Room

n 1956 James Baldwin pushed for the publication of his second

novel, despite the homophobic attitudes that he encountered
both in the publishing industry and in private circles. As W. J.
Weatherby points out,

Yasmin Y. DeGout is a
graduate student at Yale
University, where she is

pursuing her dual interests in

One of [Baldwin's] most traumatic experiences was the fate of

Giovanni's Room.... He had been made to tone down the homosex-

African American and

ual ending of the first novel, but there was no way the theme of
homosexuality could be cut out of this second novel .... It would

cultural productions with

merely be a homosexual novel to most people, even publishers. In

1955, when the majority of American homosexuals found it much

and the United States Virgin

safer to remain in the closet, the reaction to a homosexual novel was

Caribbean literatures and

emphases on James Baldwin
Islands.

predictable.... (117-18)

Many of those who enjoyed Go Tell It on the Mountain and Baldwin's early essays considered Giovanni's Room to be "sensational
and more cheaply written" (Weatherby 118). Turned down by Alfred Knopf because editors "feared legal action over the homosexual content" (Campbell 96), the novel, Baldwin was told, "would
ruin his reputation as a leading young black writer, and he was
advised to burn the manuscript" (Weatherby 119).
Giovanni's Room was published by Michael Joseph in London
before being accepted by Dial Press. Richard Wright, whose dispute with the younger author has become literary history, rejected Baldwin for indulging in "shameful weeping" (Weatherby
124). Twelve years later, Eldridge Cleaver launched what is perhaps the most biting attack on Baldwin. In Soul on Ice, Cleaver
suggests that the black homosexual who takes a white lover enacts self-hatred against his own blackness and that this "racial
death-wish is manifested as the driving force in James Baldwin"
(103). Baldwin, says Cleaver, adopted Europe as his fatherland
(105) and despised Wright for his masculinity (109), and Cleaver
concludes by saying that "homosexuality is a sickness, just as are
baby-rape or wanting to become head of General Motors" (110).
Two years after Baldwin's death, Marshall Kirk and Hunter
Madsen would assert that "the gay revolution," its beginning
marked by the Stonewall riot in 1969, had failed (xiii). It was in
the face of this kind of homophobia that Giovanni's Room was published, and critic Stephen Adams points out that the work has continued to receive less scholarly attention than any other Baldwin
novel (133).

The historical context of the publication of Giovanni's Room

and of the persistence of homophobia in America is important to
a study that seeks to identify and understand the treatment of homoerotic love in the work of a major African American author.
What one finds, on close examination of the text, is a duality that
informs the novel as much as it informs the criticism and the colAfrican American Review, Volume 26, Number 3

1992

Yasmin

Y.

DeGout44

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lective American consciousness. Baldwin depicts homoerotic love as the

The innocence of homoerotic love

and the tragic theme of self-denial are

scends the degeneracy of the gay Pari-

conveyed by the major themes and

motifs of the work. Several critics
have pointed out the innocence of the

sian underground and is capable of

first description of homoerotic love in

natural and wholesome interaction of

innocent characters whose love tran-

healing and reformation. But he also

the novel. George E. Kent asserts that,

depicts honmoerotic love as deviant behavior that proceeds from both psy-

"falling first into a romantic homosex-

chological and socioeconomic depravity within the microcosmic home environment and within the larger society. Baldwin's personal ambivalence
is implied in his essay "The Male
Prison":
If [Gidej were going to talk about

homosexuality at all, he ought, in a

word, to have sounded a little less

disturbed .... [The] argument, for

example, as to whether or not homosexuality is natural seems to me

completely pointless-pointless because I really do not see what difference the answer makes. It seems

clear, in any case, at least in the

world we know, that no matter
what encyclopedias of physiological
and scientific knowledge are
brought to bear the answer never

can be Yes. And one of the reasons

for this is that it would rob the normal-who are simply the many-of
their necessary sense of security
and order .... (128)

The dialectic Baldwin discusses in this

passage is between the differing value
systems of mainstream America and
of the homoerotic community. Bald-

ual experience with a fellow adolescent, Joey, [David] experiences the es-

cape from isolation and the heightened spiritual awareness that love is
supposed to bring" (25). Stephen
Adams refers to this experience as an
"idyllic summer weekend ... spent
alone together" (135). Baldwin deliberately emphasizes the innocence of this

experience. He has David describe the

positive feelings that he had for Joey,

the innocence of their accidental kiss,
and the joy that the experience produced in both of the boys. Joey is described as a "nearly doomed bird"
(Giovanni's Room 14), implying that

David's love can have healing powers. David, however, has assimilated
the homophobic attitudes of mainstream society, and this forces him to
flee from Joey, then become cruel to

him. The superficial tragedy of this episode is the pain inflicted on Joey and

the dissolution of a boyhood friendship. The profound tragedy of this episode, however, is David's denial of
his homoerotic orientation. David describes this behavior as his first

win's duality stems from the acknowl-

'flight" (16), and this episode serves

edged influence of both groups upon

as a microcosm for the larger story of

David and Giovanni. The motifs of

his perception of homoerotic love.

One finds, in Giovanni's Room, that the
positive depiction of homoerotic love
conveys the tragic theme of self-denial

light and flight continue throughout

the novel and reinforce the themes of
innocence, self-denial, and fatalism.

deconstructed (by the psychological

Stephen Adams comments that, "with

the exception of the bright haloes and

and that this positive depiction is

and environmental circumstances of

starry-eyed fatality of [David's and

the homosexual characters) to reveal

the tragic failure of a society which

Giovanni's] encounter.. ., Baldwin

depicts the more complex reality of

produces deviant behavior. The

such a relationship[,] and it is unfair

reader, like Baldwin, is forced to oscil-

to accuse him, as does Irving Howe,

of 'whipped cream sentimentalism'
whenevet he deals with homosexual
love" (137).

late between two irreconcilable interpretations of the nature of homosexu-

ality.

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Giovanni's innocence is central to

David's natural sexual orientation. He

Baldwin's positive depiction of homo-

flirts with soldiers when he is drunk;

erotic love. Giovanni is described as

he is happy when he realizes that

Giovanni is attracted to him and

"rather boyish and shy" (50) and con-

stantly associated with images of light

("Something is burning in his eyes
and it lights up all his face, it is joy
and pride" [71]); everyone is proud of
him. Baldwin distinguishes between
the love of David and Giovanni and
the lust of the homosexual underworld (symbolized by Jacques and
Guillaume) by having Giovanni express his distaste for the two older
men and for the bourgeoisie. Moreover, Giovanni's demise is due to his
honesty. He loses his job because he
tells Guillaume that he does not want
to be Guillaume's lover, and he presumably kills Guillaume because of
his anger toward the deception of his
former employer.
Baldwin manipulates the reader's
response to Giovanni by forcing us to
identify with David, who communicates the innocence of Giovanni and

proud of him, and he terms his experience with Giovanni his "awakening"
(59). With Giovanni, David becomes
"insufferably childish and high-spirited" (110). As in the case of Joey,
David's love is depicted as a healing
device. Giovanni, we're told, finds out
that he wants to live only when he

meets David, and David asserts that

"the burden of [Giovanni's] salvation" seemed to be on him (152).
The superficial tragedy of this
story is the death of the youthful
Giovanni after the dissolution of his
relationship with David-a great
source of the pathos in the novel. But
the greater tragedy is David's continued self-denial. He recognizes his be-

trayal of Giovanni, and he projects

this guilt upon the caretaker of the
villa in Southern France, who represents, for David, the peasant mother

the misrepresentation of Giovanni's

of Giovanni. He also is able to admit

character in the newspaper accounts

to Hella that he was lying to himself

of Guillaume's murder. The story,

when he denied his love for Giovanni.

however, is not about Giovanni; it is

about David and David's self-denial.

However, neither of these admissions-though they represent a movement toward self-acceptance-allows

David to break the chains of his psychological prison. Stephen Adams asserts that David, at the end of the
work, "attempts the heroic role of
bringing himself both to remember
and to forget his garden of Edenand so walks off into the morning
with 'a dreadful weight of hope'"
(139). At the very end of the work,
however, one finds David ripping up
the notice that reveals the time of

D avid's sexual ambivalence is a

constant underlying theme of

Giovanni's Room. David considers leav-

ing Giovanni in the bar when they

first meet; he longs to go home to
America when he finds himself attracted to Giovanni; he seeks escape
by looking for a whore and then by
having a sexual encounter with Sue.
David finally attempts to flee from
himself-from his homoerotic feel-

ings-by arranging to marry Hella,

only to find that he cannot maintain
this charade. He then resorts to the
use of alcohol and flees from Hella
into the homosexual underworld.
The innocence of homoerotic love
is implicit in this interpretation.
Throughout the work, Baldwin implies that homoerotic behavior is

Giovanni's execution and having

some of the scraps blown back upon
him. If David has begun to move toward self-acceptance, this acceptance
is never reached in the work. He is
never able to let himself fully love
Giovanni; and he has played it safe
for so long that, as Jacques foreshadowed, he has ended up "trapped in

[his] own dirty body" (77).

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David's homosexuality as his natural

The theme of fatalism that runs
sexual orientation and the depiction
throughout the work implies that
of the innocence of homoerotic love
David will never overcome his lust and
are subverted by psychological and sowill never be able to love: He has not
cioeconomic factors.
found out why the lusts of Jacques
As Horace Porter asserts, "Baldand Guillaume are shameful. Even
win emphasizes David's developing
after the "ritual sacrifice" of Giovanni
sexual self-consciousness-step by
and "the long night of penance which
psychological step" (146).
shapes the novel" (Adams
In the first chapter of the
139), the reader finds
David's
work, Baldwin details the
David longing to fulfill the
sexual
childhood and adolescent
societal role of becoming a
environment of David. We
man by putting away his
ambivalence
learn that David moved
childish things. David reis a constant
seven times during his
mains trapped by his body,
childhood, and that his fatrapped in a mirror: '. . . I
underlying
ther moves once more, bedo not know what moves
theme of
fore David leaves for
in this body, what this
Giovanni's
France. David's motion,
body is searching ... how
then, seems to echo that of
I can save [my troubling
Room.
his father and of his childsex] from the knife.... Yet,
hood. His mother died
the key to my salvation,
which cannot save my body, is hidwhen David was five; her image has
den in my flesh" (223). David cannot
terrified him in the form of nightaccept a self that he cannot define, nor
mares, and her picture dominates the
does he realize that he is trapped by
living room. David's father argues
his own divided mind. He is in mo-

with Ellen, David's aunt, and appears

tion, just as he was when the novel

unapproachable to David, who de-

began (on the eve of his vigil) and just

as he has been throughout his re-

scribes his father hidden behind a

counted tale. As Horace A. Porter sug-

perate attempts to conquer his father's

gests:

newspaper. David also describes des-

attention, attempts that end in his

. . . there is no clear indication that

father's show of anger. His father

[David] can face his life, his past,

with more honesty than before. He

Once, when David overhears his fa-

is, in one way or another, doomed

ther and Ellen arguing, he learns

to repeat himself.... David, even as

he searches his naked soul on the

eve before the morning of

overindulges in alcohol and women.

about his father's promiscuity and,

consequently, is led to wonder

Giovanni's execution, does not un-

whether each woman that he faces

derstand that the past never dies

and never goes away. (140-41)

has been "interfered with" by his fa-

The positive depiction of homoerotic love (its association with inno-

cence and with healing powers) and

ther. During this argument, his father

says, " '.. . all I want for David is that

he grow up to be a man. And when I

say man, Ellen, I don't mean a Sunday

the subsequent tragedy of David, who

school teacher.' " This frightens

denies his homosexuality and there-

David, who from this point on de-

fore cannot save Giovanni, coexist

spises his father and hates Ellen.

with a negative depiction of homo-

David explicitly notes that this argu-

erotic love and the subsequent im-

ment occurs after his experience with

plication that society, in producing

Joey and that it is this overheard dis-

sexual deviants, has failed to meet tra-

pute which makes him "secretive and

ditional standards. The depiction of

cruel" (24).

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Baldwin pays particular attention

to the father-son relationship. David
soon begins to overindulge in alcohol
and does not want his father to know
him. He points out that his father
does not play the authoritative role
that he wants in a father:
We were not like father and son,
my father sometimes proudly said,
we were like buddies. I think my
father sometimes actually believed
this. I never did. I did not want to
be his buddy; I wanted to be his
son. What passed between us as
masculine candor exhausted and
appalled me. Fathers ought to avoid
utter nakedness before their sons. I
did not want to know-not, anyway,
from his mouth-that his flesh was
as unregenerate as my own. (26)

of a mother, for example, was listed

by Lawrence Hatterer (1970) as one of
the "fifteen factors in the mother-son
relationship that lead to homosexuality" (Green 52). The Bell Group, however, concluded in 1981 that "a boy's
mother seems to have only a limited
influence on his sexual orientation in
adulthood" (Bell, Hammersmith, and
Weinberg 50). George Kent asserts
that "unresolved oedipal conflicts are

hinted [at], and just when [David]

When David is involved in a car accident, a modified version of his earlier

attempts to gain attention, he screams
for his mother. His father is unable to
face the possibility that he has misguided his son (" 'I haven't done anything wrong, have I?' " his father asks
before symbolically smothering David
with a handkerchief [29]), and this
weakness in his father forces David
into a permanent silence, accepting
that he will never truly communicate
with the man. David chooses a system
of evasion that culminates in his flight
into the army, through "desperate
women" (31), and on to France.
By including this information in
his sketch of David's development,
Baldwin provides his reader with the
artillery necessary to classify David's
behavior as psychologically depraved. As Michael Ruse succinctly
points out, "The American Psychiatric
Association de-listed homosexual orientation as a mental disorder in 1974,
by a postal vote of 5,854 to 3,810 ....

However, in the International Classification of Diseases (9th ed., 1980), homosexuality is still a disease" (203).
Baldwin's depiction of David's childhood concurs with the psychological
explanations of homosexuality that
have developed during the latter half
of the twentieth century. The absence

needs spiritual sustenance from a father, his father, who knows nothing of
his son's experience, insists upon retaining the simplified concept of himself as his son's 'buddy" (25).
It is clear from David's description that his psychological needs were
not met by his father, who hid from
responsibility behind newspapers, behind alcohol, and behind a buddy-tobuddy relationship with his son. Dr.
Richard Green points out that "boys
with a negative relationship with
their fathers were more likely ... to
emerge as homosexual men" (59). The
Bell Group, like Baldwin, gave special
attention to the relationship between
fathers and homosexual sons. They
concluded that, like David, "prehomosexual boys have worse relationships with their fathers than preheterosexual boys do" (55). They also
observe that, like David, "more homosexual men recall their fathers as relatively weak," and they more frequently describe their fathers as cold
(58)-as David does. Interestingly, the
group also concluded that "mothers

of prehomosexual boys do not want

them to grow up to be like their fathers" (60)-just as Ellen, a surrogate
mother for David, does not want
David to be like his father.
Dr. Richard A. Isay reinterprets
several findings of the Bell Group. He
suggests, for example, that homosexual men describe their fathers as detached, absent, or hostile-as David
does-in order to distort their memories of early erotic attachment to the
male parent. Isay believes that gay

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men deliberately "distance them-

logical history that can be used to ex-

selves from their fathers in their mem-

plain homoerotic love as behavior

that is produced by diagnosable circumstances within a society. Closer
examination reveals that David's

ory" (33) -as David does by leaving

the country. According to Isay, "for
some gay adolescents . . . falling in
love is the only experience that can

overcome the resistance and denial

produced by previous years of alienation and self-disgust" (49). Unfortunately for David, his love for Joey and
Giovanni does not create self-acceptance. Isay infers that Baldwin's depiction of David's attraction to Joey is autobiographical, that it portrays

Baldwin's first attraction to another

man. And Isay goes on to suggest that
" 'the consolidation of sexuality and
the beginning of integration as part of
a positive self-image does [sic] not
usually occur as early in homosexual
adolescents as it does in heterosexual
boys" (51).

Isay's inference, from reading

Giovanni's Room, regarding Baldwin's

sexual psychogenesis may ring of the
intentional fallacy, but given the autobiographical nature of Giovanni's
Room (see Weatherby 118 and Porter
15-16), as well as Baldwin's biographical treatment of his father in "Notes of
a Native Son" (see 72-73), Isay raises a
legitimate issue. The psychological
studies cited above were all produced
after the advent of the gay revolution,
after the writing of Giovanni's Room.
The authors of the works take varied
implicit stands on the issue of homoerotic love, representing both the tradition of homophobia and the attitudes of the gay revolution. In each
case, however, their search is for the
unique psychological circumstances
that produce homosexuality. Whether
they view this behavior as normal or
abnormal, the implication in their
writing is that different psychological
factors produce heterosexual and homosexual men.

Baldwin, in his depiction of "the

grave sexual and social problems that
affect the lives of homosexuals and
often lead to unhappiness and tragedy" (Meyers 18-19), creates a psycho-

flight has several levels of psychological implications. Baldwin emphasizes

the heterosexuality of David's father,
who flirts with women and wants his
son to become a heterosexually active
man, and David responds to this
knowledge with hatred. Indeed, he
hates Ellen and his father, both of
whom express the traditional roles
that they would like David to play.
David's anger and his flight into the
army may be seen as his rejection of
these roles and rebellion against his
parental authority figures. But, ironically, his rebellion takes the form of
flight into his father's alcoholic and
heterosexually promiscuous behavior.
In fact, David's fear of his homoerotic
feelings leads him to imitate the authority against whom he rebels. His
inner conflict may be seen as the
struggle between the rebellion
against the heterosexual stereotypes
of his father and his fear of not meeting the heterosexual values of his society. In seeking to resolve this conflict, he overlooks self-definition and
never achieves self-acceptance. As
Leslie A. Fielder suggests, "He is left
to a life of degradation and self-reproach, punctuated by furtive affairs
with sailors" (147).

Q iovanni is also a victim of psychological circumstances. His

journey from Italy to France is a flight

from his ruined concept of his own

manhood (shattered by the death of
his stillborn son). His loss of faith is

conveyed when he describes spitting

on the crucifix, and its continued absence is conveyed by his belief that he
no longer has a home in his village.
Although Giovanni is not afraid of
"the stink of love" (187), the psychological reverberations of the death of
his child provide clinical reasons for

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his lack of interest in women:" 'Per-

with the other boys on the streets and

haps it is because women are just a lit-

makes his way toward his capital

tle more trouble than I can afford

crime at Guillaume's bar.

right now" (105). The motif of Eden

These psychological and socioeco-

in the work is important for the expla-

nomic reasons can be used to explain

nation of Giovanni's flight. " 'Don't

Giovanni's homoerotic behavior as

the product of depraved circum-

leave me. Please don't leave me' ," he

says to David, and David comforts

him, "staring above his head at the

wall, at the man and woman on the
wall who walked together among
roses" (186). Giovanni's Eden is a heterosexual idyll. As Stephen Adams
suggests, "Giovanni casts himself into
the underworld" as a form of self-punishment (139).
Giovanni's homoerotic involvements also have socioeconomic implications. Giovanni points out that
he was always disappointed on
Christmas, and he describes his life as
a poor vineyard worker in Italy. One
cannot help but wonder whether the
impoverished conditions he describes
contributed to the death of his infant.
Furthermore, socioeconomic conditions are directly related to his fate in
France and his homosexual behavior
there. During his first encounter with
Guillaume, he avoids making a scene
in the cinema because he knows that

Guillaume, a well-dressed and wellestablished Frenchman, can have him

arrested. He goes to dinner at Guillaume's home because he has not
eaten, and he does not remain sexually "untouched" (83) by Guillaume

in his bid to obtain a job. It is his poverty that leads him to the homosexual
bar where he is working when he
meets David-a bar where Giovanni
is surrounded by those whom he cannot believe "ever went to bed with
anybody" (38) and where he is treated
like "a valuable racehorse or a rare bit

of china" (45). His success in warding

off the sexual approaches of Guillaume causes him to be fired, and
when David abandons him, he is
forced to trade sexual favors with

stances. And though very little time is

spent describing Joey, it is made clear
in the text that Joey is a "very quick
and dark" boy and that David lives
'in a better neighborhood" (11) than
his young friend. Jacques, the spokesperson for the homosexual underworld, openly admits his own deprav-

ity when he says to David," 'You

play it safe long enough ... and you'll

end up trapped in your own dirty

body, forever and forever and for-

ever-like me'" (77).

Jacques' words reveal yet another
subject of fatalism in the novel-the
inevitable self-destruction caused by
homoerotic love. Early in the work,
David muses that
everyone . . . goes the same dark
road-and the road has a trick of
being most dark, most treacherous,
when it seems most bright-and it's
true that nobody stays in the garden of Eden. ... perhaps, life only
offers the choice of remembering
the garden or forgetting it.... People who remember court madness
through pain ... ; people who forget court another kind of madness,
the madness of denial of pain and
the hatred of innocence .... (36)

David's statement implies that the

rosy depiction of homoerotic love (dis-

cussed above) is unreliable, that everyone is irrevocably trapped in a game

of pain or denial. The zombie-like homosexual who is refused a drink by
David issues both a curse and a
prophesy: "'You will be very
unhappy' " (56). This person may be
reading David's rejection of homosex-

uality in David's refusal to buy him a

drink, but it seems more likely that he

Jacques for sustenance, acting effeminate to please the older man. When
Jacques fails him, he sells his body

sees David's path toward an affair

with Giovanni (which he has just mentioned) and that he views David as
one who is destined to spiral into the

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homosexual underworld. Jacques, a

veteran of this world, also seems to

know the impossibility of a lasting ho-

dangerous than this isolation, for

men will commit any crimes whatever rather than endure it. (131-32)

moerotic relationship:" 'And how

This passage is perhaps Baldwin's

long, at the best, can it last? since you

most candid commentary on the plot

of Giovanni's Room, for Baldwin's analysis of Gide can also serve as an analysis of both David and Giovanni, neither of whom can love a woman and
both of whom resort to extreme
means of self-preservation.

are both men and still have everywhere to go?"' (77).

According to David, both he and
Giovanni know that their relationship
will end and avoid discussing it. Indeed, the implication is that, even if
David were able to help heal Giovanni, Giovanni would eventually return
to the "trouble" of women. David,
who has been awakened to a knowledge of (though not acceptance of) his
homoerotic feelings, is doomed to the
prison of his own flesh: "Sometimes,
in the days which are coming ... facing, over coffee and cigarette smoke,
last night's impenetrable, meaningless
boy who will shortly rise and vanish
like smoke, I will see Giovanni again,
as he was that night, so vivid, so winning, all of the light of that gloomy
tunnel trapped around his head" (59).
In short, David's awakened sexuality
has trapped him in a life of lust.

The depiction of undesirable psychological and socioeconomic circumstances surrounding homoerotic char-

acters and the depiction of the destruction caused by homoerotic behavior

informs Giovanni's Room. Baldwin also
conveys this theme in his discussion
of Gide in "The Male Prison":
The really horrible thing about the

phenomenon of present-day homosexuality, the horrible thing which

lies curled at the heart of Gide's
trouble and his work and the reason
that he so clung to Madeline, is that
today's unlucky deviate can only
save himself by the most tremendous exertion of all his forces from
falling in to an underworld in
which he meets either men or
women, where it is impossible to
have either lover or friend, where
the possibility of genuine human
involvement has altogether ceased.

... It is worth observing, too, that

when men can no longer love

women they also cease to love or

trust each other, which makes their
isolation complete. Nothing is more

David enacts the fate of homoerotic love as it is described by Elizabeth R. Moberly: ". . . in cases where
the father had been actually hostile ...
the homosexual partner was invariably identified with the father who
had been hated and feared. It was
thus hardly surprising that such relationships should involve hostility and
instability and impermanence" (40).
Thus, the rages of David's father foreordain David's hostility toward
Giovanni. Like the other homoerotic
relationships in the novel, the relationship of David and Giovanni involves
hostility and impermanence. The tragedy, in this case, is not David's inability to accept his homoerotic feelings
but the failure of a society to produce
the psychological and socioeconomic
conditions that prevent deviant behavior. Both David and Giovanni are the
victims of the worlds from which they
come, not because they are prohibited
from living in love but because their
lives have been constructed so that
they desire to love one another.

This analysis of the text reveals

that coexisting paradoxically with the
positive depiction of homoerotic love
is a negative depiction of homoerotic
love. Is the reader to be taken in by
the homoerotic pathos of the novel
and ignore the psychological and socioeconomic conditions that point to
this behavior as the product of degenerate circumstances? Does the reader
pursue an elaborate psychological
and Marxist critique of the work that
undermines the genuine beauty of the
novel, the theme of the innocence and
the panacea of a love between David

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and Giovanni? Perhaps the reader

wonders why such a duality exists in
Giovanni's Room: Did Baldwin unwittingly fall victim of the attitudes of his
day? Did he deliberately contrive to
placate his homophobic audience?
Did he merely write of his own experiences, unaware of their implications?
Or perhaps Giovanni's Room is not,
after all, about homosexuality.

In a 1965 interview conducted by

James Mossman, Baldwin asserted
that "those terms, homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual[l] are 20th-century
terms which, for me, really have very

little meaning. I've never, myself, in

watching other people, watching life,
been able to discern exactly where the
barriers were" (54). This statement implies that Baldwin was not concerned
with sexual stereotypes and, consequently, that homoerotic love would
not be the central theme of a work
such as Giovanni's Room. In this interview, however, Baldwin does go on to
express concerns that may be identified as two major themes in Giovanni's
Room.

"I believe," Baldwin asserts, "we

tary lovelessness in the heterosexual

world" (Adams 136). Both Adams
and Fielder also point out that Giovanni's Room reverberates within the tradition of tragic love stories that evolve
around differences in social, economic, or ethnic identity-a comparison also noted by James Campbell
(101-02). Fielder (offensively) suggests, for example, that Baldwin substitutes for the poor, pregnant girl a
"poor but worthy fairy' (148). That
both homoerotic and heterosexual
characters are linked by a common
theme-the inability to face oneself

and the subsequent inability to loveserves to universalize Baldwin's work.

The tragedy of not facing the
truth about oneself is also the theme
of Eugene OCNeill's Beyond the Horizon
(1920), a play which conveys the destruction of self-denial without a homoerotic character. With reference to
this work, O'Neill remarked that "the
tragedy of life ... is what makes it
worthwhile.... If [the dreamer] ever
thinks for a moment that he is a success, then he is finished" (Gelb and
Gelb 180). It is this ironic pessimism
that informs the tragic works of both

Baldwin and O'Neill, and it is

can save each other. In fact I think we

must save each other" (Mossman 48).
Kent points out this larger theme in

Giovanni's Room: "What Baldwin registers well is the desperate need for love
that brings transcendence" (25).

Weatherby also points out that "the bisexual triangle was only the surface
concern of the novel as far as the author was concerned. To him, the real
theme was the price of lying to yourself, of not facing the truth about yourself" (118).
The theme of homosexuality is
deconstructed in Giovanni's Room because the major themes of the work
are also depicted through female, heterosexual characters. Though the de-

piction of women in this novel is most

often anti-feminist, David's experiences with the self-loathing Sue and
the lonely Hella reveal "a complemen-

through this ironic tragedy that Baldwin reveals his faith in humankind,
his faith that a social change can be
produced by depicting the destruc-

tiveness of existing value systems.

In the case of Giovanni's Room,

both David and Giovanni symbolize

positive fruit withered by sociological
constraints, and most of Baldwin's homoerotic characters struggle against
such circumstances. Similarly tragic
analogues to Giovanni and David in-

clude Arthur and Crunch (ust Above

My Head) and Rufus and Vivaldo (Another Country), homoerotic characters

with diagnosable psychological and/

or socioeconomic pathologies. Indeed,
all the major characters in Baldwin's

fiction are provided with psychological and socioeconomic conditions

against which they must struggle, and
many-like Giovanni-die struggling:

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not lie, that little boys are boys, little

girls girls" (149). Through the voices
of Jacques, Giovanni, and Hella, Baldwin does show that David is attemptized in prison) in If Beale Street Could
ing to hold on to his American innoTalk, and others. Homoerotic and hetcence, his American happiness. But
erosexual characters alike face the
Fielder's synopsis of this theme is too
destructiveness of psychological and
narrow. Throughout the work, Baldsocioeconomic circumwin suggests that the loss
stances in Baldwin's ficof innocence is a human
Perhaps
tion. The theme pervades
universal-that no one can
Giovanni's
all of his work and serves
return to Eden. In expressas the foundation of his soing his shame about his hoRoom is not,
cial protest. Interestingly,
moerotic emotions, David
after all,
while Horace Porter exasserts that ". . . what was
plores Baldwin's re-vision
strange was that his was
about homoof Richard Wright's Native
but one tiny aspect of the
sexuality.
dreadful human tangle ocSon, particularly insofar as
Giovanni serves as an anacurring everywhere, without end, forever" (84). Later, David
logue to Bigger Thomas (141-53),
again suggests that the loss of innoDavid's fear is also parallel to that of
Bigger. In both works, the protagocence is not simply an American exnists, unable to love, resort to cruperience: "Ten years hence, little
elty. In both novels, a dialectic is creJean Pierre or Marie might find
ated between the wholesome aspirathemselves out here beside the river
tions of the protagonists and the soand wonder, like me, how they had
cietal values to which the protagofallen from the web of safety" (137).
nists succumb. The appearance of inThe loss of innocence and the effects
nocence and the presence of degenerof self-denial are deep themes in
ation, then, must coexist in
Giovanni's Room that subvert the inGiovanni's Room.
terpretation of the work as a novel

Royal and Richard (with Roy headed

for destruction) in Go Tell It On the
Mountain, Peanut in Just Above My
Head, Frank (as Fonny is being brutal-

Baldwin also describes a second

major theme of the novel in his 1965
interview with James Mossman:
America ... is the most extraordi-

nary collection of ill-assessed motives and undigested history, the

most peculiar system of moral eva-

sions and tremendous innocence.

There's something very winning
and very moving and very beautiful
about those people who don't yet
know that the world is big and
complex and dark and that you
have to grow up and become yourself big and complex and dark in
order to deal with it. (57)

The loss of innocence is a theme in

Giovanni's Room that transcends both
national origin and sexual orientation.
Fielder suggests that Baldwin "is attempting a tragic theme: the loss of
the last American innocence, the last

moral certainty-that the mirror does

about homoerotic love.

he complexity of Giovanni's
. Room is one of Baldwin's many
literary achievements. The dual depiction of homoerotic love has led to an
ambivalent body of criticism, ranging
from those who view the relationship
between David and Giovanni as sterile to those who view it as sentimental
(see Adams 137). Indeed, the work
may serve as a literary Rorschach test
for the reader's sexual consciousness.
The coexistence of the positive depiction of homoerotic love (as an innocent expression of love and as a healing device) and the negative depiction
of homoerotic love (as deviant behavior produced by depraved psychological and socioeconomic circumstances)
has allowed readers to approach the

434 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW

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work in a way that way suits their

own psychological needs or social
value systems. Within the love story,
however, Baldwin embeds larger
themes that have little to do with the
particular circumstances of the main
characters. The reader must be able to
see beyond his or her own personal
prejudices in order to find the real
meaning of the work.
In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin
would state another version of these
themes: "To be sensual, I think, is to

respect and rejoice in the force of life,

of life itself, and to be present in all

that one does .... Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their
own reactions as deeply as they do
here, and become as joyless as they
have become" (62). This statement describes both David and Sue, both the
tragedy of self-denial and the tragedy
produced by a harmful society. Both
tragic readings of the work are informed by Baldwin's social cry that society must change, that we must deliver one another.

Adams, Stephen. "James Baldwin.' The Homosexual as Hero in Contemporary Fiction. Totowa: Barnes,
1980. Rpt. as "Giovanni's Room: The Homosexual as Hero.' Modem Critical Views: James Baldwin. Ed.

Works
Cited

Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1986.131-39.

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. 1963. New York: Dell, 1964.

-. 'Gide as Husband and Homosexual." New Leader 13 Dec. 1954: 18-20. Rpt. as "The Male Prison.'
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. 1961. New York: Dell, 1963. 127-32.
. Giovanni's Room. 1956. New York: Dell, 1964.

. "Notes of a Native Son.' Notes of a Native Son. 1955. New York: Bantam, 1964. 71-95.
Bell, Alan P., Sue Kiefer Hammersmith, and Martin S. Weinberg. Sexual Preference: Its Development in
Men and Women. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. New York: Viking, 1991.

Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. New York: Dell, 1968.

Fielder, Leslie A. "A Homosexual Dilemma.' New Leader 10 Dec. 1956:16-17. Rpt. in Critical Essays on
James Baldwin. Ed. Nancy V. Burt and Fred L Standley. Boston: Hall, 1988.146-49.

Gelb, Arthur, and Barbara Gelb. O'Neill. New York: Dell, 1965.
Green, Richard. The 'Sissy Boy Syndrome' and the Development of Homosexuality. New Haven: Yale UP,
1987.

Isay, Richard A. Being Homosexual: Gay Men and Their Development. New York: Farrar, 1989.
Kent, George E. "Baldwin and the Problem of Being.' CLA Journal 7 (1964): 202-14. Rpt. in James Baldwin:
A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Therman B. O'Daniel. Washington: Howard UP, 1977.19-29.
Kirk, Marshall, and Hunter Madsen. After the Ball: HowAmerica Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays

in the 'QOs. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Homosexuality and Literature, 1890-1930. Montreal: Queen's UP, 1977.
Moberly, Elizabeth R. Psychogenesis: The Early Development of Gender Identity. Boston: Routledge, 1983.
Mossman, James. "Race, Hate, Sex, and Color: A Conversation with James Baldwin and Colin Macinnes.'
Encounter July 1965: 55-60. Rpt. in Conversations with James Baldwin. Ed. Fred L Standley and Louis
H. Pratt. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1989.46-58.
Porter, Horace A. Stealing the Fire: The Art and Protest of James Baldwin. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1989.
Ruse, Michael. Homosexuality:A Philosophical Inquiry. New York: Blackwell, 1988.
Weatherby, W. J. James Baldwin: Artist on Fire. New York: Fine, 1989.

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