James Giovanni's Room Theme

In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the audience is prompted to recognize the connection between the themes of self-deception and flight due to the actions of many of the main characters throughout the story, especially David. The three main characters, David, Giovanni, and, Hella can be easily identified as the characters that rely on flight, another prominent theme, as their way of coping with their self-deception the most. In addition, there are multiple instances within the narrative when minor characters are also very much under the influence of self-deception as well. After reading Lemming’s interview with James Baldwin it becomes clearer why he may have chosen the theme of flight for the characters since it is what he said he did when …show more content…
The introduction of self-deception appears on page five when David is talking about his relationship to Hella stating, “I told her that I had loved her once and I made myself believe it” (Baldwin, 5). Having this within the first pages of the narrative presents the theme to the reader so then it is more recognizable when it reappears later on in the chapters in almost all of the other characters. Later on in the chapter the theme of self-deception reappears when David is flashing back to his time spent with …show more content…
David refuses to accept his attraction to other men and his homosexual tendencies that are presenting themselves. The two young boys are alone in Joey’s bedroom one night and while David knows deep down that he is attracted to Joey he refuses to acknowledge it. In this section David is fighting his self-deception but it is still present when he thinks things such as, “But Joey is a boy” and “…how this could have happened in me” (Baldwin, 9). After struggling with his attraction David’s shame wins over and he makes his decision to leave Joey’s bed, and ultimately take flight from Joey’s friendship altogether. This is the very first instance the audience is presented with the connection between flight and its relation to self-deception with Giovanni’s Room: even David recognizes it when he says “My flight may, indeed, have begun that summer—which does not tell me where to find the germ of the dilemma which resolved itself, that summer, into flight” (Baldwin, 10). From this point on in the narrative David resorts to flight after he is, in some form, forced to face the constant self-deception he is under about his