Giovanni's room

  After watching 'I Am Not Your Negro,' a documentary about James Baldwin, I realized that he was a very sensitive and keen-minded author.

Surely, the echo from his sentences connected to my deep mind. His name, 'James Baldwin,' imprinted on my heart and my brain deeply. 

 

   Therefore, I decided to find his books. 

At that time, the only book I could get of his book from the public library near my house was 'Giovanni's room'. I didn't have any other choice but to read it. 

In the beginning, while l I was reading the first chapter I thought it was an essay, not a novel,. because the sentences began as a monologue, and the background was in Paris. 

I know that James Baldwin had spent time in Paris. This made me misunderstand that it was one of his other essays. 

At some point, probably when the protagonist was called David, I recognized it was his novel, not an essay. 

 

  David experienced same-sex relationships when he was young.  

He considered it was pathological and unstable behavior of his adolescence and was ashamed of himself.  After a lot of time passed, he met Giovanni. Giovanni brought David into his room. Giovanni had broken down his room in order to give space to David and tried to break a wall in David's mind.  

However, David rejected his sexual identity. The more Giovanni begged him to open his mind, the more David wanted to escape Giovanni's room. 

Finally, through Giovanni's death, David accepted his real identity and stopped feeling shame on his body.. 

 

   This novel was published in 1956. 

Considering the atmospheres at that time, it was a controversial book. First of all, at that time, gay culture was prohibited.  Yet, in the novel, the protagonist who had denied his sexual identity constantly, in the end, stared at himself truthfully. Additionally, there are vivid depictions of gay bars in the back streets of Paris. Next, this novel explicitly shows upper-class men's hypocrisy towards young and foreign laborers.   

What's noteworthy about this novel is that it not only traces the protagonist's journey to find his real ego but also exposes how existing ruling classes who have double standards deal with immigrants who are lower-income.

Let's look at David and Hella. They were tourists to spend their money. 

Therefore, the more money they spent, the more welcomed they were by current ruling power classes. On the other hand, Giovanni is a worker and is in a class of "OTHERS" who could steal French citizens’ jobs or just a "Stranger".  

Thus, Giovanni could be the object of sexual exploitation from Jacques and Guillaume, making this violence against "OTHERS". 

Giovanni represents "OTHERS" and showed resistance against peoples' unjust views and exploitation by killing Guillaume.  

However, as usual, Stranger's resistance is seen as a taboo, ingratitude, and immoral behavior. Naturally, Giovanni is punished by the ruling classes and their social orders. 

For this reason, Giovanni's punishment was a natural consequence, and David realizes his real identity transforms his status from tourist to "stranger". 

Therefore, I read this novel as a description of discrimination against "OTHERS" and think it shows the author's deep thought as an African-American human rights advocate.  

 

   But the only thing that's unfortunate in this novel is that there are stereotyped women’s characters. 

Hella has tried to continually catch David and express that "women should exist with men" in an indirect way. I wonder if these characters are created on purpose in order to show the ruling classes' irony that they need some existence who could be possible enemies and  'OTHERS' at the same time.   

 

Finally, I wrap up by quoting an impressive sentence.

"And yet-when one begins to search for the crucial, the definitive moment, the moment which changed all others, one finds oneself pressing, in great pain, through a maze of false signals and abruptly locking doors."