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This digital document is an article from Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, published by Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) on June 1, 2004. The length of the article is 8036 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Venetian masks: intercultural allusion, transcultural identity, and two Othellos.(cultural identity in works by William Shakespeare, Caryl Phillips)
Author: Jonathan P.A. Sell
Publication: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2004
Publisher: Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)
Page: NA

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Richard Wright's brutal and gripping novel was a huge hit - selling at a rate of 2,000 copies a day - on first publication in 1940.Amazon.com Review
Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral thatwill lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration,poverty, and incomprehension. As a young black man in the Chicago ofthe '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism thatsurround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment ofpanic, these walls begin to close in. There is no help for him--notfrom his hapless family; not from liberal do-gooders or from hiswell-meaning yet naive friend Jan; certainly not from the police,prosecutors, or judges. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, anda violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion orsympathy. And yet...

A more compelling story than Native Son has not been written inthe 20th century by an American writer. That is not to say thatRichard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote thefirst novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnishedtruth about American social and class relations. As Irving Howeasserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, Americanculture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of theold lies [and] brought out into the open, as no one ever had before,the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroyour culture."

Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black inAmerica--including Wright's own highly successful Uncle Tom'sChildren, a collection of five stories that focused on thevictimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racialsegregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyricalidealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressivesituations and evoking the reader's pity. In Native Son, Wrightwas aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character sodamaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and withhuman sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader'scompassion:

"I didn't want to kill," Bigger shouted. "But what Ikilled for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! Imust have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must'vebeen good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must havebeen good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I wasreally alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for'em. It's the truth..."

Customer Reviews (195)

Dreadful
The story is devoid of a hero. That's a mistake. If I want that type of story I can read a newspaper.

In essence, the story is a form of naturalism. The two great naturalist authors are
Zola and Tolstoy, two more dreadful writers.

The idea presented in the story is that society drove the main character to commit murder,
and that society is responsible.

Man is evil is the main idea in this book. It's an old idea in many forms. Religion
claims that man was born sinful or evil.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau changed the cause to society.
Wrightt uses Rousseau's evil philosophy.

To compare how evil that philosophy is compare the French Revolution with the American Revolution.
Study Rousseau. Rousseau influenced the French. Locke influenced the Americans.


The beginning of the book captures its essence of evil.
It starts with a rat running around a room, in which there are four people. Until the rat is killed,
it terrorizes the frightened occupants.

This is the analogy and essence of the entire story. That society is the rat terrorizing the main
character and that because the main character is terrorized by society he kills, commits murder.
It's a false syllogism.

Metaphysically, that view of the world is not my own. Consciously, I do not share any of
the thoughts or emotions of the main character.

The entire story drops the context that man has free will. Yet the author had free will in
the choice of his subject.

If I want to visit the gutter......But I do not visit gutters.

Dark Destiny
This book is a surprise to me. I expected to find a young Fredrick Douglass transported into the twentieth century to fight racisim and found myself staring at Camus' The Stranger. I expected Chicago circa 1940 and found, in addition, a dark alley in Camus' French Algeria. The Stranger watches his gallows being built while the Native Son builds his step by misstep, yet they are both condemmed to be free...from what or whom?

"In all his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him. He was living truly and deeply, no matter what others may think, looking at them with their blind eyes."

Bigger Thomas murders the rich daughter of a Chicago land developerwhile working a chauffeur for the kind hearted family.Bigger then commits another murder to cover up the first-his poor black girlfriend. The wheels of injustice move fast, yet in the first part of the book there is no conscience or sympathy with any of the characters. The characters are soulless and remind me of the deadness of a early Orwell novel replete with interesting historical background scenes.

Something happens in this novel...drab black and white becomes Technicolor. The black preacher speaks and the word (of the novel) becomes flesh as Bigger is confronted with his misdeeds.

"It was like the old voice of his mother telling of suffering, hope, and love beyond this world."

The world of his mother Bigger kills with his choices, the new world is one of faith predicated on religion but fulfilled with Communism... with Jan, the communist party man he attempts to frame with the first murder. The characters come to life with introspection and self-dialog in the last quarter of the book and we are treated with an ideological finale by Max, the socialist lawyer.

The end dialog of Max reminds me of the pulpit which Upton Sinclair chose for the end of THE JUNGLE. Max avoids Marxist ideology and follows a mild idealism in the same way that Wright himself did in his strained relations with communist party ideologues.

Faith transcends. Faith in a new society is perhaps naive, but it is faith beyond the morbid egocentricity that defines itself by choice, Existentialism and condemnation to Godless freedom.

Faith in Christ would have the best choice for all in this gloomy book.

Interesting Message
In Chicago in the 1930s, race relations were tenuous at best.The main character, Bigger Thomas, is black and living in a slum apartment with his mother and two siblings.He is twenty years old and had no job, no motivation except for petty crime, and no future.

When a rich white philanthropist who prides himself on his generosity toward the black cause (while simultaneously owning the rat-infested apartment he rents out at an exorbitant rate to the Thomas family) offers Bigger a job as his family's chauffeur, Bigger is pressured into taking it.The man's daughter is a problem, though.She is a radical, dating a communist, and she tries to treat Bigger as an equal, which simply confuses and angers him.When he accidentally kills her, his life is plunged into chaos and terror and, for the first time, he has a feeling of power.

I found the most interesting part of this story to be the speechmaking of Bigger's lawyer in the last third of the book.Bigger himself is a despicable character, but the description of the despair in which black people in the city at this time were living was enlightening.

As a white person living in 2010, it's sometimes hard for me to really see the oppression in our country's history, which to some degree still exists.Through Max's words, I gained a clearer understanding of what it must have been like to be someone like Bigger Thomas, trapped in his life.I didn't like the character any better, and I wouldn't call the book an enjoyable one to read, but I did like having my ideas challenged through Max's message.

Review of Native Son
Native Son reflected racial discrimination in American in 1930s. Through the explanation of the main character Bigger, like he robbed Blum, killed Marry and his girl friend, these plots all show readers he was afraid of the society. Native Son just uses Bigger's actions to reflect the reality life in 1930s. On the surface of the book, it just describe a black boy who lived a poor house and he hate his family, robbed people and did very bad things. But we can in-depth look at the novel of Native Son; this is a satirical novel that influences racial discrimination in the country in the 1930s. At the beginning of the novel, there is a long alarm ring; not only has it waked up Bigger's family, but also gives American a warning. It is dangerous if people also keep race relations in the state. Native Son just uses Bigger's actions to reflect the reality life in 1930s.

with 1 reservation, the audio book is essential listening/reading
audio book: a totally engaging rendition of a mid-20th century classic. Peter Frances James's reading and dramatization are simply superb -- and even preferable to one's own reading of the text. I write this as the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest and dropped charges are leading up to a White House reconciliation -- I hope! In Native Son, Wright captured perfectly the frustration and rage of young black men, ca. 1930s. Bigger Thomas is one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. If only this book had become required reading for Americans after the second World War, perhaps civil rights legislation would've happened sooner.

Wright made a misjudgment, however, when he focused on the closing arguments of the prosecutor and Thomas's defense atty. near the book's end. These are way too long as soliloquies and sink the momentum of the story. When he stays with Thomas and his travails, the book soars.



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Considered an 'audacious' second novel, "Giovanni's Room" is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (88)

Beauty and Tragedy in 1950s Paris
GIOVANNI'S ROOM was not James Baldwin's first novel; his debut came three years before with GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN.Nor was it the first post-war novel to deal with homosexuality; Gore Vidal addressed the issue in 1948's THE CITY AND THE PILLAR.

But Vidal, as good a writer as he is, is not a poet.And GIOVANNI'S ROOM is the work of a poet.

Baldwin's writing is uncommonly beautiful.Even when dealing with the darkest of emotions and the most devastating of tragedies, his prose soars like an eagle above the usual form of the novel, giving the events a depth and meaning that, to my mind, most forcibly recall Tennessee Williams; it is a shame that none of Baldwin's novels or plays were ever filmed.

The fairly simple story concerns David, an expatriate American in Paris, aged about twenty-seven or so and somewhat of a drifter.He is involved with a young woman named Hella, whom he has asked to marry him; at the start of the story, which is told in flashback, Hella is off traveling in Spain, considering David's proposal, which despite the appearance of importance she is giving it, has a hollow ring to it.

While Hella is gone, David, needing money, becomes involved in the homosexual world of Paris.He does not go so far as to have sex with any of the men, but he learns quickly how to use them to get the money that his father keeps refusing to send him from the States.

One night, with one of these acquaintances, a middle-aged businessman named Jacques, David goes to a bar owned by Jacques's friend Guillaume, and meets the new barman, a beautiful young Italian named Giovanni.The two young men hit it off extremely well; without revealing too much, suffice it to say that the evening ends in Giovanni's room, in his bed.

The remainder of the novel deals with David's inner turmoil over the fact that he has fallen head-over-heels in love with Giovanni, a love, though this is not said directly, much deeper than whatever it is he feels (felt?) for Hella.Later on, naturally, Hella returns to Paris, and David, afraid to face Giovanni, simply abandons him and takes up with Hella at her hotel.

The inevitable happens, and Giovanni and Hella eventually meet on the street.Giovanni is with Jacques, and they invite David and Hella out for a drink.Hella, perhaps sensing something, begs off on the grounds that she does not feel well.David takes her back to her hotel.

The following evening, David returns to Giovanni's room and attempts to explain to him why he must make his life with Hella, but at this point it is obvious that he is trying to convince himself.

The novel turns tragic after David and Giovanni separate forever.Giovanni commits a murder and is sent to the guillotine; David and Hella rent a house in the south of France, but inevitably, one night, David disappears and takes up with a sailor.Hella tracks him down and finds him, very drunk, with the sailor, in a gay bar.Embittered, she leaves for the United States almost immediately.David, who appears to be planning to stay in Paris, leaves the house and goes to the bus stop to wait for the bus to the train station.

I don't know to what extent David's self-loathing mirrored Baldwin's, or if Baldwin felt that way at all, but the really remarkable thing is that all of the people in this novel, American, French, and Italian, are white, yet Baldwin, who seems to have had an almost musical ear for dialogue, speaks in all these different voices with amazing accuracy and precision.

This is an astonishing work of art.To describe it as a novel about homosexuality is to trivialize it.It is a deeply human story about people with flaws, and how these flaws sometimes can be our undoing.

An aching love story in shades of grey, punctuated by brilliant light
'Giovanni's Room' has the aching ring of truth and personal experience, and is written in sentences so beautiful and well-crafted that the novel seems more like poetry than prose. Baldwin'simagery is deep, subtle, and multi-layered -- one can honestly dig into this movel for days and weeks and come up with reams of symobolism and deeper truth even beyond the beautiful and poignant surface story. This is what makes the book a timeless classic and great masterpiece, rather than simply a well-written story of forbidden love.

One example, out of many: Upon my second reading (like many, I've read this gem a half dozen times), I noticed the shades in which the story is written. It is painted in many and various and deep shades of grey -- like a great charcoal "painting," or a black & white photograph of a rainy day. In terms of great novels, 'Giovanni's Room' for me is actually one that uses some of the darkest greys.

Yet the dark greys are punctuated by a brilliant light, and the light comes from the character Giovanni. From the first moment that the protagonist David meets Giovanni, time stops and the world is set ablaze as from the brightest of suns. It's remarkable sensing the great shafts of light that Giovanni represent, in the midst of the greying darkness around him and around David.

And since -- as the perspicacious reader will notice upon a deep examination of the book -- Giovanni represents, on a symbolic level, David's homosexuality, once can see that his true sexual orientatioon is the source of light and life in David's existence, and that to deny that is to cut off his light, his source of life and happiness.

Excrutiatingly Beautiful
I read Giovanni's Room for an English class at the college-level on the experience of foreignness. This has been one of my favorite classes and favorite teachers (not to keep beating on the word favorite, but maybe everything just came together really well?). We explored different ways of being foreign, first the more obvious - literally being foreign like being an immigrant, traveler, etc. Next, ways we could feel foreign, either by our personal interests or our political views.

Giovanni's room was just beautiful. It was a story of a man who felt foreign in his own skin, and traveled half way across the world to escape himself, only to trap himself, unable to escape. In Giovanni's room, he is exposed but cannot face himself, destroying himself and those around him. Baldwin is poetic. rhythmic. violent, emotional. and excruciatingly beautiful.

Revisiting the book again with the context of the author's background gives it another layer of complexity. Giovanni's room was published in 1956, during the post war era of social conformity. Baldwin, though black, writes exclusively about white characters experiencing sexual exploration. He himself left the US and went to Paris in 1948 due to American prejudice against homosexuals and blacks. In many ways, this novel has autobiographical elements.

A milestone that stands the test of time
I read Giovanni's Room originally when I was in my 20's and loved it.
Now at 51, I just reread it.This time around it struck me as a tad overwrought, but still a wonderful book.It's certainly one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read.The prose just flows gracefully along like a Brahms Intermezzo.Baldwin captures the anguish of a man struggling with his sexuality and the impact that has on others beautifully.His insights into human nature are keen.Despite being written in the 50's when homosexuality was quite taboo, the book has aged remarkably well and in no way feels dated.Highly recommended.

Weird ending
I liked the story, although it seemed more like the outline to a great novel yet to be written. It was just too short. The only thing I didn't like was the sudden strange ending that was unrelated to the relationships between any of the main characters. ... Read more

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This volume starts from a textual analysis of Phillip's fiction and examines how it charts a new Diasporic sensibility, grounded in the novelist's Caribbeanness, but also expressive of a redifined sense of Britishness. Focusing on Phillips's pervasive interest in displacement, it also addresses characterization and the non-conventional form of his current narratives, two major aspects of his art which is discussed here in the context of current debates on post-colonialism.
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