I wonder if it is bigger than his room” (113). When Giovanni is in jail, David wonders about the jail cell Giovanni is in and says, “I wonder about the size of Giovanni’s cell. One of the comparisons made for Giovanni’s room is the parallel created linking his room to his jail cell in later in the book. Yet, people cannot truly bury things for too long as visible within David. This causes homosexual men and people who are not conforming to norms to turn societal negativity into self-hatred and the deliberate burying of one’s true-self and feelings. The novel reflects internal and external conflict created upon the common belief in society that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong. These different portrayals of Giovanni’s room are dirty, suffocating, and restricting Baldwin is showing the reader that homosexuality can be understood from all these adjectives, detrimental as they are. At the time this novel was written, there was a fear of a loss of masculinity or a sense of what was considered normal for a long time, whether that be due to homosexuality, or the rise of communism in Eastern Europe after the war. His room is also compared to a tomb, which is a comparison Baldwin utilizes a lot in a string of variations on the use of spaces like the idea of being “under” or in the “bottom.” These different images of Giovanni’s room exemplify the negative feelings and uneasiness surrounding homosexuality, and even the loss of masculinity as produced by society. This association becomes a symbol of Giovanni’s chaotic and messy life, holding the bond between Giovanni and David, an David’s feelings towards homosexuality. Giovanni’s room is depicted with such traits usually associated with a jail cell.

The audience soon finds out that this room is arguably the most important space in the novel. The very fact that Baldwin titled the novel Giovanni’s Room focalizes the attention to a single space: Giovanni’s room.

Baldwin allows these characters to feed off the spaces in which the novel takes place in, almost as if the rooms and spaces are a part of the characters at specific instances in the novel. Sometimes subtle and sometimes more obvious, spaces act as symbols and checkpoints for characters as they navigate through society after World War II.

In James Baldwin’s novel Giovanni’s Room, location, spaces, and rooms play pivotal roles in the nuance of the novel.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin