Giovanni's Room

Chapter 3 exposes how deeply David ties his masculinity to heterosexuality. David believes having a wife and kids would leave his “manhood unquestioned” (104) because he would visibly be following society’s expectations. David considers relationships with women “steady ground” (104) because they are indisputable to dominant tradition—regardless of whether the relationship is happy or not—whereas relationships with men are risky and suspect to interrogation. David thus holds onto Hella not because he loves her but because he wants what a marriage can offer, for him to “become myself again” (104) by being secure in his masculinity.

Baldwin uses dramatic irony during Giovanni’s monologue about Guillaume to augment the impending tragedy of David’s departure. Giovanni tells David how he defended him against Guillaume’s accusations that he was “just an American boy” who will leave him soon (108). Giovanni sees David as different than other men who are “low and cheap and dirty” (105). The reader, however, knows that David is planning to leave Giovanni in as little as a few days. When David chooses to comfort Giovanni and promises to never leave him, he creates the circumstances for the looming separation’s tragedy by effectively pulling out the rug from underneath Giovanni. David says that “Judas and the Savior had met in me” (111) because his presence simultaneously saves Giovanni from hurting himself while it also causes future harm for when David eventually betrays him.

David’s present-day reflections reveal how his feelings have changed with time and distance from Giovanni. Now that he does not run the chance of seeing Giovanni ever again, David finally admits: “I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again” (112). In the moment, all David could think of was wanting to escape the room and the shame his feelings gave him but looking back he sees their relationship as “very beautiful” (114). His new nostalgia for the better parts of the relationship leads him down an anguishing spiral of imagining Giovanni’s life in prison. The extent of David’s torment at the memory of Giovanni’s smallest details are the “proof and fruit of intimacy” (113) that he can no longer deny. His reminiscences augment the approaching tragedy of his separation from Giovanni and expand the theme of self-deception, as in the past David deceives himself into thoroughly believing he doesn’t need Giovanni, when in the future he recognizes that he does.

David finally expresses his dislike of the room, which comes as a great surprise to Giovanni, who had been renovating the room since being fired from his job as a sign of his love for David. Conversely, David sees the renovations as Giovanni’s way of “dragging me with him to the bottom of the sea” (114). David feels his independence from Giovanni slipping—and a confrontation with Hella approaching—and so he expresses his desire to leave the room and Paris altogether. Giovanni calls David wicked for keeping his true feelings a secret for so long, asking, “[S]ince when […] have you so hated the room? Since when? Since yesterday? Since always?” (117). Though David thinks his role is to be Giovanni’s savior, Giovanni knows he also saved David by giving him a place to live; David’s expression of dislike for the room thus feels like a rejection of Giovanni and the hard work he has put into the space for David’s benefit.

Giovanni elaborates on the symbol of home in his conversation with David about leaving Paris. David eventually wants to go home to America, but Giovanni believes that David will only consider it home when he is away from it. For Giovanni, home is an abstract idea to comfort a person when they are away; when they go back home, they will “find that home is not home anymore” (116) and fear the unfamiliarity. Only when he and David are away from their homes can they think about one day going back. Home thus comes to symbolize a distant ideal, a romanticized version of an earlier, unattainable life. David’s present-day memories prove Giovanni’s theory, as only from the South of France can David look back to Giovanni’s room with fondness and reverence.