It is not about where you are, but what you make of where you are. A room is only a structure, that is, until memories and emotions are attached to it. Giovanni’s room, the private room in which David and Giovanni spend time together, symbolizes all aspects of their relationship and is a representation of David’s emotional state. In the room itself, love both conquers and fails. In the beginning of the novel, it acts as a place of refuge, where they can shut out the rest of the world and David can be himself, and display the feelings he usually pushes away. However, as the book progresses, it makes David feel trapped and suffocated. Throughout the novel, the way that David’s mental state fluctuates between love and shame and everything in
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Although it could be viewed as a small detail, the unpacked suitcases are an incredibly symbolic part of Giovanni’s room. Usually people unpack when they are going to be somewhere permanently, but neither Giovanni nor David made the effort to do so. Using the imagery of a packed suitcase, Baldwin suggests that they are too afraid to “unpack” their feelings for each other and make them permanent. They always have to be on edge since their relationship has to happen in private and they cannot remove their devotion to each other by having it out in the open. Therefore, the concept of home is almost temporary in a sense. Eventually, David recognizes the “interior, emotional side of home—a condition—as opposed to a simply external, geographical reality” (73). It is no wonder that David fights such an internal battle, as his impression of physical versus emotional home is so contradicting. His physical home is in a country that condemns his homosexuality, and appears to exhaust his emotional well being. However, his emotional home, the place he feels safe, is with Giovanni, in Giovanni’s room. He flees America as an attempt to avoid his sexuality but in doing so, realizes that “perhaps home is not a place, but simply an irrevocable condition” (92). David mistakenly defines his “irrevocable” home as America, when, in fact, it is his sexuality that is truly unchangeable. For a while he expresses an interest in returning “home across the ocean, to things and people I knew and understood” (62), but he also fears that if he returns, there will be many questions he cannot yet
Although it could be viewed as a small detail, the unpacked suitcases are an incredibly symbolic part of Giovanni’s room. Usually people unpack when they are going to be somewhere permanently, but neither Giovanni nor David made the effort to do so. Using the imagery of a packed suitcase, Baldwin suggests that they are too afraid to “unpack” their feelings for each other and make them permanent. They always have to be on edge since their relationship has to happen in private and they cannot remove their devotion to each other by having it out in the open. Therefore, the concept of home is almost temporary in a sense. Eventually, David recognizes the “interior, emotional side of home—a condition—as opposed to a simply external, geographical reality” (73). It is no wonder that David fights such an internal battle, as his impression of physical versus emotional home is so contradicting. His physical home is in a country that condemns his homosexuality, and appears to exhaust his emotional well being. However, his emotional home, the place he feels safe, is with Giovanni, in Giovanni’s room. He flees America as an attempt to avoid his sexuality but in doing so, realizes that “perhaps home is not a place, but simply an irrevocable condition” (92). David mistakenly defines his “irrevocable” home as America, when, in fact, it is his sexuality that is truly unchangeable. For a while he expresses an interest in returning “home across the ocean, to things and people I knew and understood” (62), but he also fears that if he returns, there will be many questions he cannot yet