English 2000 Perspectives in Literature

5)  I think race play a small part in this book because the book is mostly talking about the gay activities during that time period. The significance of David being white is that fact he can travel to Paris and that his father can send him money without a problem. I figure that Joey was a white boy because he and David was best friends and also the civil right movement was in that time period. I believe Giovanni was white too because he talk about when he was young he lived in Italy. I think the purposes behind the racial choices is that black people is not also the one struggling. Some white people struggle with homosexuality. They know society label gays as wrong and inhuman so some of them be in denial that they are gay.

Jodi Grant

Giovanni’s room approaches homosexuality in a very subtle way to me. The novel starts of with the death of Dave’s mother, then moves on to the joey incident, has a bad relation ship with the father, moves to Paris where he meets a girl and Giovanni. This gives me the idea that James Baldwin was Building up or giving us hints that Dave was always meant to be gay. But at the same time James constantly makes Dave conflict him self. He’s not sure how he feels about the Joey incident so Dave pushes Joey away, then he leaves his home not just because of his bad relationship with his father but because he want to forget about what had happened there. He tries to meet new women and then they all end badly. He also at one point talks about how he feels about gay people.  All of this gives me the idea that James Baldwin not only might have he been doing some charter development but he  as well an explaining a internalized homophobia with himself. James left the states because he was a gay black man and Dave left because he was a gay and his fear or rejection or disappointment from his father.  Both were gay and both were scared of some sort of rejection.

Alex Vicuna

First, I have to say that I loved the conversation between Jacques and David. I loved how insightful,relevant, universal and honest the conversation Jacques was having with David. I mostly loved that the conversation they were having can be intertwined to many different situations and applies to many different individuals,not just homosexuals. Jacques is trying to tell David that he needs to finally be honest with himself and others, like Hella, about the truth that he is gay, and start to accept it and enjoy it.

Jacques tries to tell David that he was his age once and has went through what he is experiencing, and instead of running from who he is and being ashamed of it he should be honest with him. He tells him that he’s “play it safe long enough”(57), and it is time to finally take a risk and allow himself to be loved the way he wants to be instead of being ashamed and disgusted with it. The theme of safety and risk is illuminated through Jacques telling David that he has played it safe by pretending to be straight and hiding his attraction to men, because he is afraid of the risk of exposing himself and accepting that he is gay. When Jacques says,”your father or mine, should have told us that many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour-and in the oddest places!-for the lack of it”(58) really explains that Jacques thinks(probably knows) that David isn’t allowing himself to be loved because he isn’t being honest with himself.

I think this theme is universal because it is relevant every  human being in general. Individuals are afraid to be loved and the risk of revealing yourself and allowing yourself to vulnerable to another human being. They rather hidden and safe than risk showing themselves. The same thing can be said about individulas who rather “play it safe” by blending in with the norm of society than risk standing out by being an outsider, just like David is doing. I think this part of the novel foreshadows the imminent and inevitable  relationship between David and Giovanni and the end of David’s relationship with Hella.

The text in Giovanni’s Room approaches homosexuality because in parts of the book David is hooking up with guys. Like when he slept with Joey its obviously a homosexual moment or when he was with Giovanni at the bar and his room. He is not advocating the acceptance of homosexuality to the world  but I do think he wants homosexuals to accept it themselves. There is some homophobia within himself, he does not want to like men or think about liking men he said while at the bar. I think these instances are  for character development as far as for the story and all but I also think Baldwin is also reflecting on himself a little. You know there are some incidents in the story that also has happened to him in real life so you never know.

In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” by Audre Lorde (1980), there is one point that really touch me, which is women didn’t had much rights to independence of themselves. Men overseen women as housewives, such as remaining in the household, cleaning, taking care their children, and other housework chores they must do. But in our time period the level between men and women start change, there is men that start stay home do cleaning, taking care their children, and other housework, and women go out to work, people respect to each other, but somehow still have people stay at the same not because they want to, maybe they learn from older, or learn from their experience, everyone to be equal that is impossible.

Reading this article I noticed there were a few points that the author made that can relate to the present. But being the fact that this article was written in 1980’s, much has changed though not completeley vanished. A persons sexuality and who they choose to be with now a days is more acceptible than it was before, it is not  as huge of a problem as it once was made to be. Another is the issue with how women were viewed and what “their place ” was has changed drastically, however sexisim does still exsist. Same goes for racisim. People till this day experience the results of racisim and it is truly sad. In my opinion men will never see women as an equal and thats fine because as long as a woman can see themselves as an equal then thats all that really matters. I dont think these issues will ever go away , but at least it is now easier and accepted for people to express opions and be who they wan

In my opinion I believe Jacques is trying to give David his perspectives of David’s life.  Jacques is trying to give David another path other than the one David is trying to follow.  Jacques is also trying to tell David that he was in his shoes and has gone through the same experiences that David is going through.  With Jacques getting into David’s head and physically putting what is bothering David with his sexuality out in the open, such as saying that the David believe the act of being together can be something other than dirty.  I believe that the theme of safety and risk is illuminated in the conversation by describing what life can be for David.  If David were to take the safety way in life he would most likely be miserable and regret himself until he dies.  Compared to if he decides to risk his pride and his father’s love (which he really didn’t receive) he will be happy and devoted to the one person that he will be himself with.  I believe this foreshadows his life because it seems like David will certainly become like Jacques and become full of regrets.

I believe that a lot of the points that Audre Lorde brings up in her “Age, Race and sex” paper are still relevant today. On the whole, racism and sexism still exists today. On a specific note however, some of her points are outdated. For example the point that she makes about Black and Third world people, Working-class people, older people and women making up the “dehumanized inferior” group is not relative today. I believe that blacks and women have definitely earned more rights and more equal opportunities today than thirty years ago since that paper was written. I do agree with another point that she made about the tradition of American society where members of the oppressed or objectified groups felling that they have to mimic the oppressor and adopt their language and manners to feel more secure and more accepted. This holds true today in my experiences. Everyone has to be politically correct when it comes to hot topics like sexuality, politics, religion and other touchy subjects. Ever since 9/11 it has become more difficult to have discussions about religion or politics because everyone is afraid to be politically incorrect or viewed as a terrorist or anti-America and we just watched as our country spent millions of dollars, and hundreds of lives on wars that left us in debt and an economic crisis but we responded to that change with fear (change being our country going to war), or some of us ignored it. I think this relates to Audre Lorde’s essay when she said, “institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that’s not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is is subordinate” (115).

Audre Lorde “Age, Race, Class and Sex” had many great points that she talked about and proven. Being a feminist activist Audre definitely fought against many of these problems she talked about and of course in the span of thirty-three years, some of these problems had gone through many changes. Like on page 117 and 118 where she talked about how white teachers had problems teaching students about African American literature yet had no difficulty with works of art by Shakesphere, Aristophanes and other great writers. To me that definitely changed because in middle school I had a teacher named Ms.Muir and was she Caucasian. During Black history month and throughout the school semester, she had no difficulty teaching us about African American Literature. One point that isn’t outdated is on page 117 where she talked about “our daughters are allowing their bodies to be hampered and purgatoried…” This is relevant to this time and to me because I have a one year old niece and it’s frightening thinking about that time in her life when she starts wearing miniskirts and tight clothing. I just hope I do a good job as her uncle to prevent that and have an influence where I can tell her to change her clothes and she’ll do so.

In Audre Lorde “Age, Race, Class, and Sex”, the author talk about how society reacted and feel toward the differences types of race, class and sexuality preferences which they are against. Her point of view seems to be revelant today. Like it have been said before racism toward race and sexuality will never be completely gone. Now a days still happen in the low  meaning is not as brutality has  decades ago,  now we try  it to covered up with “everybody is equal” and by allowing  ” same sex marriage”.  however, society treat us diferently  wether we are hispanic or black,  homosexual, heterosexual and so on. In the united states there have been cases were gays have been killed becuase of their nature, the ir diferences sexuality preference.