Giovanni’s Room: Paradox 1 key example

Giovanni’s aquatic metaphor is a critique of American idealism but an equally fitting critique of love. The metaphor of “big fish” eating “little fish” recognizes the predatory realities of love in the book, in which the pursuit of desire is inseparable from harm and damage. Those in love cannot, as David fumblingly proposes, “choose to be eaten and also not to eat.” To love is to hurt.

Pain and pleasure define David’s relationship with Giovanni thereafter. David cannot rid the image of Giovanni’s body from his mind, and he recounts the tenderness he feels for his partner as they spitball cherries at each other: “I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up.” But he detects a stifling, possessive quality to this love at the same time. Giovanni’s affections at once “crush” David and make him “whole again.” David’s narration makes careful inventory of the “threat” in Giovanni’s voice and intensity of his gaze.

The affair spirals into a hopelessly destructive relationship. As their love intensifies, David discovers why Giovanni “had wanted me” and realizes that he is meant to “destroy this room and to give Giovanni a new life.” And when he abandons Giovanni for Hella, his partner takes the slight to heart. Giovanni’s possessiveness may be at its most unsettling when he admits that, “if I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.”

This kind of possessiveness isn’t limited to Giovanni alone. Jacques and Guillaume—wealthy, gay men who groom young boys with “tigerish intensity”—give form to love at its worst. Too old to attract men any longer, Jacques admits to David that his unsatisfied love leads him to prey upon others. Earnest, desperate affection in this case is only a few steps removed from wanton lust. Through paradox, the novel suggests that love—especially the kind left unfulfilled—can be dangerously destructive, even if David would like to believe otherwise.