The Cage of Reality: Nuancing Processes of Identity in James Baldwin’s Fiction

Abstract

This thesis explores issues and processes of identity in three pieces of James Baldwin’s fiction: “Going to Meet the Man” (1965), Giovanni’s Room (1956), and Another Country (1962). The point of departure is Baldwin’s concept of “the cage of reality,” a term used to describe the ways in which society traps the individual in a mold of assigned identity, and from which one cannot escape, but can hope to be free from through acknowledgement. The processes of acknowledging or ignoring the cage of reality is what this thesis explores in central characters in these three works, and this study finds that American society is riddled with a trait Baldwin calls “preservation of innocence,” translatable to a willful ignorance of the cage of reality, which explains the persistence of harmful identity norms. The key to overcoming the cage of reality is, according to Baldwin, to take responsibility, and accept that all individuals exist in a “web of ambiguity.” This thesis uses critical race theory and some psychoanalytical approaches to the short story “Going to Meet the Man,” and a selection of existentialist terms in the readings of Giovanni’s Room and Another Country.