From here, we can see the role of his father in shaping David’s concept of a being a blue-blooded male. He wants his son to be a man, a manly man, not a Sunday school teacher. For him, being hurt in an accident doesn’t require you to cry. His dad was very sensitive when it comes to being a man. As David starts to tell about his life as a young American boy, he lets us know about his mother dying at a very young age, and him being raised by his father and aunt. In the first meeting with this man, we will get an impression that there is wrong about him and the way he stares out of the window.
This novel is a narrative story, all from David’s point of view. Inside the novel entitled Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin’s second novel, we will meet David, a young American who left his homeland to live in Paris. Lets try to find Baldwin inside some of his works and try to understand the concept he wanted to impart regarding the topic of race, sexuality and gender. You will see these topics in a different angle. His works allows you to look at race and sexuality like an open minded and rational person. But I am in no position to call them flaws since those attributes made him so special that even these flaws can be referred to be his greatest assets.
There is a famous line that says that it takes a lot of courage to stand up for what you believe in, and in my opinion, James Baldwin demonstrated more than just courage when he decided to write and publish his novels, exposing a lot of his flaws and vulnerabilities in the process. Even those who were the issue them selves, find it hard to adapt to the changes inside their system, especially when their society isn’t ready to understand them the so-called identity crisis can be too hard to handle this time around.īeing a black and a homosexual at the same time isn’t that easy to handle because it could destroy your life if you aren’t careful, especially half a century ago. But even today, there is still a large portion of the world that doesn’t approve to this kind of change.
Although the present generation is very open to this kind of issue, it took years, even decades, to calm this situation. Over the past century, the topic that revolves around race and gender had been an issue that received a lot of ridicule and criticism from the general public.
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