Giovanni’s Room does a lot of amazing things. The story is heartbreaking and earth-shattering and humanizing. It makes you angry and makes you want to cry and yell. But what is pulling these emotions and feelings out of the audience?
Well, that might begin at the genre. At the conventions within the book that Baldwin follows and doesn’t follow. By identifying the genre we would be able to anticipate the text and even face the projections we cast onto Giovanni’s Room.
So what’s the genre? A quick Google search of “Giovanni’s Room genre” will show that lots of people are saying gay literature. But is it? What is gay literature? Is it people that don’t conform to a female-gendered person and male-gendered person kiss or share intense feelings? Okay, yeah that happens within Giovanni’s Room. But that doesn’t really help lay some of the conventions that actually happen in the novel. By saying gay literature, a reader isn’t prepared for David’s denial of Giovanni, or even Giovanni’s death. Gay literature doesn’t feel quite right. Yes, there are not-straight characters but that’s not the whole pie– just a slice.
The book also carries moments of romance throughout it, but that’s really in small moments like David’s time with Joey and the early and less complicated days with Giovanni. David and Giovanni aren’t lovers that are bound to be together by fate or the stars in the sky. They’re bound by their choices, and they feel more like star-crossed lovers. Always waiting for the other, missing opportunities, and living with regrets. And well, Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, isn’t it?
And so far, tragedy feels the most right. The closest to preparing readers for what happens, what conventions they’ll experience. While all genres are subject to writers who break and twist their rules (or conventions) they’re usually acknowledged at the very least. You have David, the extremely flawed character, and his building internal conflict of how can he give himself to someone? He fled from Hella, he fled from Giovanni, and that may have been one of his biggest mistakes. David and Giovanni do so well for so long, but the fantasy falls away when Hella comes to visit and Giovanni is fired. The rising action builds and builds and builds and then time stops when Guillaume is killed. And it slows painfully as the characters deal with the repercussions and as they approach Giovanni’s execution. The weight of the tragedy falls heavily onto the reader in the ending moments, Giovanni’s death and the letter that blows back at David.
The weight of this tragedy presses at different moments. Some press lightly, some press with crushing force, some press when you least expect them too. They surprise you; a phenomenon discussed in Jane Gallop’s essay “Ethics of Reading: Close Encounters”. In the essay she writes that readers can begin to “[look] at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea ‘behind the text’” (Gallop 7). By reading closely the reading experience can start to open up meanings behind “images and metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context,” (7).
There is an interesting moment where a surprising detail emerges. It begins on page 63 after Giovanni and David spend their first moments together exploring Paris. David attempts to head back to his hotel room but is persuaded by Giovanni to come back to his room instead of “[facing] an ugly concierge and then go to sleep in that room all by yourself and then wake up later, with a terrible stomach and a sour mouth, wanting to commit suicide,” (Baldwin 63).
It’s interesting that Giovanni has to compare David’s hotel room to a hangover and ultimately wanting to commit suicide. Whereas spending the night with him is “much more cheerful than that,” (63). Waking up with Giovanni would be the complete opposite, it would be like gaining life. Their time spent apart is like death, cold and terrible and depressing; but together it is warm and joyous.
Giovanni’s persuasion is his only way to keep David with him, he knows that David would rather run away to his hotel. As happy as Giovanni is that David agrees to stay with him, he knows that David’s resistance still lingers. If David can find an out, he might jump to take it. So how does Giovanni ensure that this man will stay with him? He locks the door. Literally sealing David in with him. And then David thinks something interesting as they lay together:
“With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes.”
page 64
David’s instincts, or his need for self-preservation, are telling him to flee. To run and hide from this bad, new, different thing. And yet he says and he sighs Yes. David gives in to this moment where he gets to experience happiness and vulnerability with a lover. His desire to love and experience love wins over his panic.
This unspoken interaction, where David and Giovanni are fully aware of David’s resistance, ends with a positive charge. David allows himself to have this moment.
There’s a moment in Gallops essay where it feels like she’s speaking directly to David:
“Focusing on the surprising, on the other hand, would mean giving up the comfort of the familiar, of the already-known for the sake of learning, of encountering something new, something she didn’t already know.”
page 11
It feels as if Gallop is embodying Giovanni. Forcing David to experience something new, something he didn’t already know. As readers, writers, and human beings, sometimes we need a Gallop or a Giovanni to lock in a room. We must face the things we think we know and scrutinize their details to learn something new, to experience a surprising detail.
Posted by Sierra, written by Angelina
A Reading List By Group 5 
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