Giovanni's Room

Baldwin introduces the titular Giovanni in this chapter, first through David’s acknowledgment of his fate and then through the scene of his first appearance. So far, the reader knows that Giovanni is set to be executed for a crime. David also explains that Giovanni once had a wife—whom he beat—and a family in Italy. These facts initially paint Giovanni as dangerous and volatile, which creates mystery around how David comes to love him. When David finally meets Giovanni in the bar, the young, confident, flirtatious man he sees starkly contrasts to the introductory facts about Giovanni. The patron’s prophecy that Giovanni “is very dangerous” (40) reasserts the conflict Giovanni will cause, while David’s rejection of this prophecy creates intrigue.

Chapter 2 introduces the motif of the young and the old, which is how David understands the division in Paris’s queer subculture. David observes relationships of exploitation and power between younger and older men. The young men seek out older men for their money as a means of survival, whereas the older men seek out younger men out of lonely desperation. David is particularly critical of older men like Jacques who have an “army of boys who had come, without love, to his bed” (28) because he offers money and gifts in return. David looks at Jacques with contempt, but also profits from this system when he runs out of money. David uses “malicious knowledge” (28) about Jacques’s desire for him to twist the older man’s fear of humiliation in David’s favor. David’s friendship “compelled [Jacques], endlessly, to hope” (28) that David will reciprocate his feelings, leaving him at David’s mercy.

David refers to Paris’s queer community as “le milieu” (22), which is slang for “the underworld.” Although the dominant French culture tolerates gay people, gay men are still contained in separate social spaces like Guillaume’s bar that have a “dubious […] reputation” (26) for debauchery. David mentally and performatively distances himself from this group while in their company by putting on an air of indulgence that aligns with heterosexual society; he is in the space but not of it. David teases Jacques’s attraction to young—usually straight—men, making sure to declare that he, too, is “sort of queer for girls myself” (30). David believes his assertion of his heterosexuality combined with his sociable tolerance of Jacques’s and the habitués’ sexuality places him “above suspicion” (23) of sharing those desires. As the story develops, however, his façade becomes less believable to those around him.

The customers in Guillaume’s bar confront David with his greatest fears about his masculinity. As he watches the various customers—most of whom are queer—he judges their failure to be what he considers real men. He is particularly disturbed by the company of drag queens, called “les folles” (26), who challenge the distinctions between masculinity and femininity. He describes these customers as grotesque for occupying a liminal gender space: “I always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody, for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainly not want one of them” (27).

David sees that their sexuality manifests in an outward change of demeanor, which he fears will happen to him if he gives in to his repressed desires. Jacques teases the precariousness of David’s “immaculate manhood” (30), which is so fragile that ordering Giovanni a drink could completely undo him. Jacques highlights how David’s masculinity is a constructed rather than natural identity which hinges on a small set of rigid social behaviors.

David’s fear of association with the habitués of Guillaume’s bar connects to the theme of paranoia. He senses that despite his performed distance, the customers “were taking bets about me” for whether he secretly has “a true vocation” as a gay man (27). His fears of rumor come true when Jacques reveals that “everyone in the bar […] is talking about how beautifully [he] hit it off” (40) with Giovanni. David is angry that he revealed his hand and lost the “deadly game” with Jacques, especially now that other men—like the “flaming princess”—feel comfortable approaching him (42). Rather than be the observer, David begins to feel the pressure of scrutiny from others, which pollutes his enjoyment of Giovanni’s conversation with anxiety.

Baldwin infuses the motif of Americanness into David and Giovanni’s initial conversation to establish Giovanni’s stereotypical perceptions of David based on his nationality. Giovanni sees Americans as naively future-looking; because their cities and their world are so new to them, they “have no sense of time at all,” and think they can control fate (34). Giovanni sees the prospect of newness has turned Americans “into another species” than their Old-World relatives (34). Though the interaction is playful, David feels “a subtle war within [him]” about his home, much to his own surprise, which makes him defensive (35). Giovanni’s mockery of America becomes a habit and makes David increasingly frustrated for the limits he feels place on him.