Swimming in the Dark

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin serves as a motif that represents Ludwik’s relationship to The Friction of Desire and Shame. For Ludwik, being gay is a constant battle between accepting his attraction to other men and the shame that he feels for it. This shame stems from the repressive communist society around him as well as his upbringing in a Catholic community. Without anyone to speak to about it, he struggles alone, until his discovery of Giovanni’s Room opens his mind to the possibilities of life as an LGBTQIA+ individual: “This wasn’t a distraction or entertainment: here was a book that seemed to have been written for me, which lifted me up into its realm and united me with something that seemed to have been there all along and that I seemed to be a part of” (45). For a long time, Ludwik reads books to escape from his everyday life, biding time. However, Giovanni’s Room strikes a chord within Ludwik, and he feels seen and connected to a larger community for the first time in his life. His conflicted feelings about being gay are echoed by Baldwin’s protagonist, and Ludwik finally has a safe place to explore and reconsider the relationship between the shame and desire for other men he feels.