Giovanni’s room represents Davids true feelings towards Joey, Giovanni and any man he finds attractive. The room is described by David as “a miserable closet of a room”, where its not complete and no matter how hard Giovanni tries to remodel it he still cannot change his view on the room, just as his relationship. He finds what he is doing is dirty and blames it on the room, “What kind of life can we have in this room?-This filthy little room”. It serves as a metaphor tying his emotions to the inanimate room, not even calling it a home even though he lived there for a couple of months. Throughout the book his view on the room never changes, even though he loved Giovanni he wanted to get away, far away, to the point he tries to convince Hella to move with him just to avoid Giovanni and his room.
Professor Laura Westengard
Email: lwestengard@citytech.cuny.edu
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Isn’t it interesting that he compares the room to a “closet?” I would have to do some research to find this out, but I don’t think that the phrase “coming out of the closet” was common back when Baldwin wrote this novel. However, he uses this metaphor to communicate David’s hidden life. This is very similar to the meaning of the phrase today.