A Powerful and Poignant Story About How Passions Can Pull You in Two Directions

Giovanni’s Room By James Baldwin, originally published in 1956, is a powerful, poignant book about being torn between doing what’s expected of you, while your passions pull you in opposite and sometimes socially untenable directions. David, an American, is living with his fiancé Hella in Paris and going through the motions of being in love, something he feels or wants to feel. She has left town to visit with her family, and during her absence he becomes friends with a young man, Giovanni. David has written his father for more money and has been living the life of a young student in Europe, minus the classes, his father is weary of what he suspects is a charade, and money becomes tight. To economize the two young men begin spending more time together. When David learns his fiancé is returning, tension and conflict arise between Giovanni and David. David and Hella are later seen by Giovanni, and the three main characters are all experiencing mixed emotions. Giovanni connects with an older man known to both he and David. Time moves on with little resolution. A crime occurs that seems to be a tipping point for David’s introspection. At one point he and Hella are reading newspaper accounts of the crime and they have this exchange, “There doesn’t seem to be much point,” she said, quietly, “in defaming the dead.” “But isn’t there some point in telling the truth?” “They’re telling the truth. He’s a member of a very important family and he’s been murdered. I know what you mean. There’s another truth they’re not telling. But newspapers never do, that’s not what they’re for.” Is truth important? What is the cost of having a life while living a lie?   

Like James Baldwin’s other works, there is a theme about how life can be excruciatingly painful. It takes courage to live an authentic life, whether you’re bucking your family’s blueprint for your future, perhaps drawn up before your birth, or coming to terms with making your own choices, in the face of certain anger and disappointment from those around you. You have to know who you are, and what you want, as life becomes a pilgrimage of discovery and actualization. There is such an intelligence and brutal honesty to Baldwin’s writing, as though he weaves the words together from strands of his own soul. Baldwin lays bare the beauty and brutality of life in spare and stunning prose. You don’t just read his narratives, you feel them deeply. His characters expose humanity in its wide diversity, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, and yet despite the injustices encountered, there seems to be at the core an abiding love for mankind, for the struggles people endure, and the moments of shared lightness of being that move randomly through life’s currents.