I feel that Baldwin chose this excerpt as the epigraph for the Giovanni’s Room because, the line itself it alludes to many of the key themes explored throughout the novel like masculinity, sexual identity, and being present. Placing the excerpt in the context of “Song of Myself” reveals even more about the idea of self-acceptance that Baldwin also explores in the novel; Many of the lines leading up to the final couplet begin with “How he,” as if to present a sort of distance between the narrator and the subject, but in the two lines, there is a shift from the third person to the first person, saying, “I am the man, I suffered, I was there.” Whitman shows the narrator accepting the things he has seen, and in doing so, accept himself, much in
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After moving in with Giovanni, David notes how he “invented in [himself] a kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work...But I am not a housewife--men never can be housewives. And the pleasure was never real or deep” (88). By using the word “invented,” Baldwin seems to hint at how David recognizes that he is playing a role to please Giovanni, but, like many roles, the superficial happiness is not enough to found a relationship on. Yet, by fulfilling the “role of the woman” in their relationship, speaks to how much David must love Giovanni because he is able to, albeit temporarily, embrace the aspect of homosexual relationships that has preoccupied him since childhood. On the flip side, however, this same role of being the woman is part of why David leaves Giovanni, shown through the part of their fight on page 142, where David declares that “[he is] a man...a man!” …show more content…
That, as he says in his fight with Giovanni, David is a man, but that by being a man he was open to a suffering unique to the suffering of a woman, and that he also was present as a man the entire time, even when he wasn’t fulfilling the normal role that society dictates. The conversation between Hella and David on pages 125 and 126 help to further illustrate this idea. Hella argues that “if a particular man is ever at the mercy of a particular woman--why, he’s somehow stopped being a man” (125). Their entire argument is centered around heterosexual norms and a heterosexual relationship, denoted by the gendered terms being italicized, but mentions nothing of a homosexual relationship, and would would happen if a “man is ever at the mercy of a particular man.” It is this idea that David struggles with, whether two men can be at the mercy of each other without losing their manhood, that initially drives him and Giovanni apart, and eventually he and Hella apart. Therefore, this declaration of masculinity found in the epigraph seems to state that regardless of what happens, David is always a man, and that his fear of no longer being a man is part of what poisons his romantic
After moving in with Giovanni, David notes how he “invented in [himself] a kind of pleasure in playing the housewife after Giovanni had gone to work...But I am not a housewife--men never can be housewives. And the pleasure was never real or deep” (88). By using the word “invented,” Baldwin seems to hint at how David recognizes that he is playing a role to please Giovanni, but, like many roles, the superficial happiness is not enough to found a relationship on. Yet, by fulfilling the “role of the woman” in their relationship, speaks to how much David must love Giovanni because he is able to, albeit temporarily, embrace the aspect of homosexual relationships that has preoccupied him since childhood. On the flip side, however, this same role of being the woman is part of why David leaves Giovanni, shown through the part of their fight on page 142, where David declares that “[he is] a man...a man!” …show more content…
That, as he says in his fight with Giovanni, David is a man, but that by being a man he was open to a suffering unique to the suffering of a woman, and that he also was present as a man the entire time, even when he wasn’t fulfilling the normal role that society dictates. The conversation between Hella and David on pages 125 and 126 help to further illustrate this idea. Hella argues that “if a particular man is ever at the mercy of a particular woman--why, he’s somehow stopped being a man” (125). Their entire argument is centered around heterosexual norms and a heterosexual relationship, denoted by the gendered terms being italicized, but mentions nothing of a homosexual relationship, and would would happen if a “man is ever at the mercy of a particular man.” It is this idea that David struggles with, whether two men can be at the mercy of each other without losing their manhood, that initially drives him and Giovanni apart, and eventually he and Hella apart. Therefore, this declaration of masculinity found in the epigraph seems to state that regardless of what happens, David is always a man, and that his fear of no longer being a man is part of what poisons his romantic