Comparing Love in Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovannis...

Baldwin’s first three novels -Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovannis Room, and Another Country-boil over with anger, prejudice, and hatred, yet the primary force his characters must contend with is love. Not meek or mawkish but ...something active, more like fire, like the wind (qtd. in ONeale 126), Baldwins notion of love can conquer the horrors of society and pave the way to emotional security (Kinnamon 5). His recipe calls for a determined identity, a confrontation with and acceptance of reality, and finally, an open, committed relationship. Though Baldwins characters desperately need love, they fail to meet these individual requirements, and the seeds of love they sow never take root and grow to fruition.†¦show more content†¦Baldwin points to his high-school writing as an act of love. It was an attempt-not to get the worlds attention-it was an attempt to be loved. It seemed a way to save myself and a way to save my family. It came out of despair (qtd. in Kin namon 3). Baldwin believes in the redemptive power of love, the power to save. But first must come despair. All of Baldwins characters suffer tremendously, for they live in modern society. Few love. Since suffering is universal but a love fulfilled is not, suffering alone does not allow one to love, ...but if dealt with courageously...can lead to self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and the forging of a genuine self-identity (Nelson 122). With no internal conflicts, one can open up to another person, and love can flower. This process, however, is rarely completed. In Another Country a vivid portrait of the universal need for love is suggested by Rufuss interpretation of a saxophonists improvisation. Rufus plays in a jazz combo with a young saxophonist who already ...had received the blow from which he never would recover (9): ...[S]omewhere along the line he had discovered that he could say it with a saxophone. He had a lot to say. He stood there, wide-legged, humping the air, filling his barrel chest, shivering in the rags of his twenty-odd years, and screaming through the horn Do you love me? Do you