Giovanni’s Room Blog 4

Schroedinger’s Giovanni 

In his article ‘A rhetoric of reading’, James Seitz makes the claim that “a good piece of writing must anticipate its reading” (143). To elaborate on this, he analyzes an excerpt from ‘A most Parisian incident’ (1890) which effectively dupes the reader into believing that two romantic partners are having illicit affairs with other people, even though the text itself never explicitly states so. He asserts that the author, Allais, crafted the narrative in such a way as to anticipate an audience that would assume his characters were cheating on each other. In other words, “Allais has anticipated his readers’ anticipations” (145). Thus, the narrative is able to subvert these assumptions by way of actively providing the reader with the means to create these false assumptions in the first place! 

I open this blog post with a Seitz summary, because I think that this part of his essay was essential to my re-examination of Giovanni’s Room as a web of rhetorical devices. Much like Allais seems to have crafted his text upon the notion that it will be consumed by presumptuous readers, is it possible that James Baldwin crafted Giovanni’s Room upon the notion that his readers will not doubt the reality as proposed by his narrator? In other words, is Baldwin’s David only able to convey the narrative in his own specific manner because Baldwin anticipated a reader who would submit to David’s presentation of reality? If so, is it reasonable for readers to ask themselves whether or not Giovanni is actually dead by the end of the book?

Beyond narrative curiosity, the answer to the question of Giovanni’s ultimate fate is essential to the integrity of David’s narrative. In many ways, David is telling his story as if it were a confession of his sins. When the old Italian woman comes to check-in on David during his last night at the southern villa, he experiences a sense of guilt: “I feel that I want to be forgiven; I want her to forgive me. But I do not know how to state my crime,” (Baldwin 70). We as readers have already known by this point that David’s ex-lover Giovanni is due to be executed by the state, which hurts David, but this is his first explicit admission of feeling like a criminal in need of salvation. In a sense, David wishes to confess to killing Giovanni. But in order to confess — and in turn receive the forgiveness and catharsis of confession — Giovanni must actually have been killed. 

For all intents and purposes, Giovanni is dead by the end of Giovanni’s Room. As David’s narrative, the text implicitly directs David’s addressee (who may be a host of those he’s wronged, but his specific audience is unclear) and the actual readers to assume that Giovanni is surely dead by the time that David is finished narrating. But neither David nor Baldwin explicitly communicate that Giovanni is dead in no uncertain terms — yes, the newspapers and Jacques have reported that Giovanni is on death row, but Giovanni’s status as currently alive or dead is never directly confirmed. Before leaving the villa, David notes a “small, blue envelope” from Jacques on the table, “informing me of the date of Giovanni’s execution” (166). But David never actually reads this letter — he takes the unopened letter and tears it “slowly into many pieces” before ever checking its contents (169). And the hypothetical-based narrating of the upcoming execution — “…perhaps it (the execution) is already over. Perhaps it is only beginning” (166) — is in no way a confirmation that Giovanni has certainly died. It may be likely that Giovanni’s death did actually happen within the world of the narrative, but David frames his confession based on an assumption that he never confirms outside of conjecture. 

When Giovanni’s Room ends, readers are meant to view Giovanni as deceased, based upon David’s word alone. If David says that Giovanni is to be executed, and if he says that he feels responsible for sending Giovanni to jail, and if he can see in his mind’s eye the exact way that Giovanni will die, then Giovanni must be dead. And the killing of Giovanni is the most horrible sin that necessitates David’s narrative confession. Ironically, by saying that Giovanni is dead, David has killed Giovanni. He has closed the door for outside interpretation. His narrative is the only way to interpret these events, and him ripping up Jacques’s letter ensured that David would remain the dominant authorial voice. Because according to the text, the letter could only mean one thing, and therefore it did not need to be opened.

Maintaining that Giovanni has died is essential in keeping the integrity of David’s narrative intact. In truth, David has no proof beyond his own stone-set conviction that his letter from Jacques would confirm the date of Giovanni’s execution. If a reader were to attempt to divorce the text’s “plot” from its narrator (an incredibly imperfect process) then they would soon realize that Giovanni could very well be alive when David has decided that he is dead. Despite the framing of the novel as a confessional baring of the soul in face of impending dread, the readers never receive explicit confirmation that this dreaded fate has arrived. What if Jacques wrote to David that Giovanni was miraculously given a reconsidered sentence? What if he wanted to tell David that Giovanni escaped prison? Or that Giovanni’s execution was halted indefinitely? As readers, we are forced to believe that Jacques is merely confirming a version of events that our narrator has already chosen to be true, and thus we will never know what really happened to Giovanni outside of David’s assumptions. The reason why this works, or why it is very easy to leave Giovanni’s Room with the conviction that Giovanni is truly dead, is because Baldwin crafted this text with the almost-certain knowledge that his audience would simply take David’s word for it by the time that his narrative ends. In text, the inevitability of Giovanni’s death feels certain by the framing of David’s narration — the confession of sin carries readers into the assumption that a great sin has, in fact, taken place, therefore Giovanni must be dying soon if David is confessing his responsibility for the impending execution. It ties a bow on the ending of the narrative. Not to mention the fact that David is a symbol of the hegemonic ruling class in 1950s America — something that I’m sure Baldwin knew would impact his audience’s ability to take David at his word alone.