Deception and Death in Giovanni’s Room

Paris represented an escape from the insurmountable prejudices of American society for many artists and intellectuals throughout the 1950s. Illuminating his perception of the city, James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room explores the intricacies of privilege in an intersectional social order. Though both poor, gay immigrants, David and Giovanni’s circumstances differ greatly. By establishing a pretense of affinity with Giovanni, David denies the reality of his lover’s hardships, ultimately causing his death.

In their first meeting, David and Giovanni connect through their disdain for the older men who pursue them. David is disgusted by Jacques’ desperate attempts to ensnare Giovanni, saying “I knew that Jacques could only hope to conquer the boy before us if the boy was, in effect, for sale…” (Baldwin 28). By highlighting the monetary aspect of Jacques’ pursuit, Baldwin illuminates the transactional nature of sexual interactions between discrete social classes. While Giovanni is desperate for money to survive, he has no shortage of potential sexual partners. Although he does not have Jacques’ old French name nor his financial stability, Giovanni possesses the mystery of beauty, affording him an enticing power. David states that Jacques “could only hope” to entice Giovanni, suggesting that despite his worldly resources, Jacques’ flirting is futile because he lacks that magnetic power of attraction. With Jacques as a counterexample, David establishes himself as alike to Giovanni—poor and beautiful:

“You are rich,” said Giovanni, and set my drink before me.

“But no. No. I simply have no change.”

(32)

David is quick to differentiate himself from Jacques and refute Giovanni’s assumption, implying that like Giovanni, his beauty is a tool for survival and he, too, is in a subordinate position to Jacques. Seemingly lacking the power differential of the transactional sexual interactions that they each depend on, their mutual attraction is charged with an immediate intimacy borne from their shared powerlessness.

As the reader is aware, however, the affinity that David constructs with Giovanni is a fabrication. Despite their common status as vulnerable outsiders, David and Giovanni do not belong to the same social class. While Giovanni depends on the attention of moneyed older men, David has the resources to survive on his own but chooses to live in poverty.  This imbalance becomes glaring after Giovanni loses his job. While he imparts emotional support to Giovanni, David refuses to provide him with material assistance as their shared resources begin to dwindle. This is in stark contrast to Giovanni, who, while working, had shared his salary to support David’s unemployed lifestyle.

I did not write my father—I put it off from day to day. It would have been too definitive an act. I knew which lie I would tell him and I knew the lie would work—only—I was not sure that it would be a lie.

(114)

Baldwin uses short, repetitive clauses to imbue these lines with a sense of urgency, like a rush of thoughts—a reflection of David’s internal struggle as he attempts to absolve himself of guilt for withholding money. Through his triplicate use of ‘lie,’ Baldwin calls attention not only to the falsehoods David tells the people around him to uphold his pleasing façade, but also to the stories he constructs to justify his actions to himself. The passage culminates in a confession: David simply cannot recognize Giovanni as a true partner and so cannot reciprocate the financial support Giovanni had provided him earlier in the novel. Thus, Giovanni becomes wholly reliant on David, while David retains his independence, replicating the dynamic Giovanni holds with men like Jacques and Guillame.

Like the ghoulish visage of the drag queen he encounters at the beginning of the novel, David’s mask begins to crumble as his illusions are laid bare. In their final confrontation, Giovanni addresses David’s deception, declaring, “I do not think you have ever lied to me, but I know that you have never told me the truth” (137). Through his use of oxymoron, Baldwin identifies the tangle of David’s self-deceit. David’s pretension of heterosexuality for his father and Hella has rendered him unable to imagine a future with Giovanni and cast off restrictive societal gender dynamics in their relationship. Through his extended pantomime of poverty, by remaining willfully unemployed, David has become convinced that he shares Giovanni’s financial circumstances and cannot change them. At the climax of the scene, Giovanni rejects these assertions, proclaiming the truth of his lover:

[T]he kind of man you and Jacques and Guillame and all your disgusting band of fairies spend all your days and nights looking for, and dreaming of…

(140)

In Giovanni’s eyes, David is no longer a vulnerable exception to the exploitative gay dating culture. Branded a ‘fairy’, David is simply another one of the men who has used Giovanni’s desperation for their own gain. He asserts that, like Jacques at the bar, David is merely ‘dreaming’ of a love that will never be fulfilled. Despite his self-righteous attitude earlier in the book, David has become the very thing he so despises.

In the aftermath of Guillame’s murder, David imagines Giovanni’s crime in vivid detail. After exhausting his other possible sources of income, David and Jacques, Giovanni is forced to return to Guillame and beg for his job back. Guillame takes advantage of Giovanni’s desperation, to exact his own pleasure. David narrates his lover’s crime: “then he simply held on, sobbing, becoming lighter every moment as Guillaume grew heavier” (153). Cheated after acquiescing to Guillame’s demands, Giovanni no longer possesses the powers of beauty and intrigue but remains trapped within an exacting system. The dirtiness of the coerced sexual act weighs on Giovanni, transforming the murder into an attempt at survival. David demonizes Guillame as exploitative and unfair for breaking his unspoken agreement with Giovanni, leading the reader to believe that Giovanni’s actions are conscionable.

In fact, Guillame’s betrayal is not so different from David’s own abandonment of Giovanni. In the moments before the murder, David pictures Giovanni standing in the street. Through his narration, David casts a phantom version of himself to follow Giovanni.

He wants to turn away, to run away. But there is no place to run. He looks up the long, dark, curving street as though he were looking for someone. But there is no one there.

(151)

Unlike David, who fled Paris at a whim, Giovanni truly has no safe place to turn. Baldwin uses sensory detail to liken Giovanni’s newly hopeless life to the ‘long, dark, curving street’ before him. Projecting his own guilt in retrospect, David imagines Giovanni looking for him, the absent ‘someone’. Finding himself alone, Giovanni has no choice but to enter Guillame’s bar. Perhaps through his extended fantasy of Giovanni’s crime, David imagines the retribution he believes he deserves.

Without Giovanni, the novelty of Paris fades to shades of grey, as it eventually did for Baldwin and other disillusioned American expats. Though life abroad was an escape from the deeply rooted systems of inequality in the United States, Baldwin illustrates that foreign historical contexts presented unique inflexible social hierarchies. Realizing that his attempt to reinvent himself away from home was futile, David is left only with regret for the harm he has caused. The retrospective reflections Baldwin intersperses through the novel reveal David’s awareness of the dire circumstances that led Giovanni to murder, circumstances he exacerbated. It is through his belated remorse that David assumes responsibility for his lover’s execution. Stripping away his mystique, Giovanni’s death represents a revelation of the harsh truth of Paris, from which both David and Baldwin’s peers fled.