Escape from Home and Self in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room

From the opening scene of Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin introduces the reader with a man divided. David, the narrator of the novel, is staring at his reflection in a window overlooking the south of France, where he has gone to escape the complicated questions of identity that haunted him in Paris. Baldwin presents the reader with a split image of David as both the internal David who is telling the story, describing what he sees, and the external David, who is being reflected in the glass. Using this image of a split self, Baldwin raises questions about how identity is formed. In the first chapter of the book, he ties these questions of identity to images of David's home. He raises questions about what home is to the expatriate and how it is formative in shaping one's self. Baldwin uses complex characters and images of dividedness in order to struggle with notions of home and how it is connected to identity, both as a place that gives definition and as a place that must be left in order to "find" one's self.