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Giovanni's Room

In: English and Literature

Submitted By didi31
Words 1209
Pages 5
Didin Hasanbelliu
Prof. Baker Wilson
English 2 01
12 March 2015 Society’s Influence
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is a perfect example of how society affects people’s decisions. The story is mainly about David a white American who moves to Paris, France, in search of his identity. In Paris he meets Hella, a white American woman which he becomes engaged with later in the story. At the beginning of their relationship, the two face some problems in which Hella is not sure if she wants to merry David or not, so she decides to go to Spain for a while to gather her thoughts and make a decision. During this time, David gets into an affair with Giovanni an Italian bartender that he meets in a bar in Paris. The decisions of these three characters are being affected by society they live in continuously in the story. In the novel the main character, David, is being affected greatly by the society he lives in. That is the reason he decided to move to Paris in search of his own identity. David is in constant denial over his homosexuality and refuses to embrace it due to the way of thinking of the American society that he grew up in those years. These ideas prevented David from expressing himself and made him try to be someone who he is not. He’s first homosexual encounter is the first evidence in the novel of how he was affected by this ideas of this society. We see this at the beginning of the book when he has sex with his friend Joey when he was a teen, as he describes it “I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then… my hear would burst… then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love” (Baldwin, 8). David embraces his feelings and emotions at first but then it seems like he regrets it and is afraid of something. “That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would lose my manhood… I was ashamed… I wondered what Joey’s mother would say… of my father… I could have cried, cried for shame and terror…” (Baldwin, 9). David is scared of what his father and Joey’s mother might say and do in case they find out about this and he feels ashamed about it. He cannot embrace who he is because the ideas of his society won’t let him. For him this meant the loose of his masculinity and from now on he is in constant denial over his homosexuality. “He attempts to deny the urges and the feelings he has within, which does not lead to heterosexual bliss or to a meaningful relationship with a woman but instead puts him into a state of weariness and despair” (Justin McFarr). He starts having random sex with man and woman so as it would appear normal to the outside society. “His desire for normalcy is overwhelming, as are the following of societal rules that dictated he enter into a monogamous relationship with a woman who will provide a home and children” (Justin McFarr). The desire for having a normal life, pushes David in having relationship with women and keeping his desire for men away from him.
Then David decides to go to Paris to find himself. In Paris he has a casual relationship with Hella, who’s also American, and proposes to her unexpectedly without even being fully sure himself if he wanted to or not. Hella decides to go to Spain to decide about the proposal then. Hella was in Paris because in some way she wanted to find a sense in her life, just like David. It is shown especially after she comes back from Spain. “I felt so aimless… like a tennis ball, bouncing, bouncing… I began to wonder where I’d land” (Baldwin, 122). She is looking for a sense in her life and she wants to have that normal life that a normal woman can have. She is a naïve woman who like to do what she want but she is also looking for a purpose on her life and want that family life that society asks for. That is why she returns to David in Paris but she doesn’t know that while she was gone many things have happened and David has betrayed her.
David has an affair with Giovanni and due to his financial situation is forced in moving in with him. They first meet at the gay bar where Giovanni was working. Immediately they have some kind of connection and they started to go out. Based on David’s description, Giovanni is in pain and he is in some kind of despair. “This dirty world, this dirty body. I never wish to make love again with anything more than the body” (Baldwin, 24). Although the narrator makes it clear that Giovanni is in pain, it isn’t clear why at first because the reader doesn’t know his background until almost the end of the novel.
Giovanni finally admits to David that he was married once back in Italy. “In Italy I had a woman and she was very good to me. She loved me, she loved me and she took care of me and she was always there when I came in from work…” (Baldwin, 138). But that he also had a child with his wife but it was dead and that was the start of his misery. “That was the first time in my life I wanted to die… I had just buried my baby in the churchyard… Yes, I had made a baby but it was born dead” (Baldwin, 139). This explains Giovanni’s behavior in the story and the pain that David was referring to. Because of this misfortune that Giovanni faces, he decides to leave Italy and his wife. Giovanni tries to escape from the pain and suffering of that moment, in seeing his child dead. He start to think that it is women’s fault for his suffering and he start having a hatred towards them.
Giovanni’s decisions were never influenced by society. His decision to leave Italy and his wife were made by his poor judgment of life and his moral weaknesses as a person. Giovanni did become a stronger man once in Paris by hiding and leaving the truth about his past behind him but eventually caught up to him and broke him even more by making him commit murder. In the other hand both David and Hella were greatly influenced by society. Their decisions were mainly based on what other people might say or do and how a normal person should behave. They never truly decided to do what they wanted and what was based in their best interest or in David’s case to follow his heart.

Baldwin, James. Giovanni's Room. New York: Vintage International Vintage, 1956. Shmoop Editorial Team. "Giovanni's Room." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. McFarr, Justin. "Essay on "Giovanni's Room"" Justinmcfarr.blogspot.com. CONTROLLED CHAOS, 19 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. <http://justinmcfarr.blogspot.com/2008/04/essay-on-giovannis-room.html>.

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