lf believe that he is a "man" as his father expects of him. He feels that his homosexuality holds him back from becoming rugged and manly and decides to "allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened" (30) him. David admits that he rejects his shameful homosexual identity and wants to believe that he possesses manly qualities such as independence: "The vision I gave my father of my life was exactly the vision in which I myself most desperately needed to believe" (30). David manipulates his father into allowing him to go to France by making him think that he could develop into the hard-working and tough man that his father hopes for because he himself wants to believe it. In other words, his father ingrains the notion of what a real man is, and so David refuses to come to terms with the sexual feelings that he has for other men by deceiving himself. Baldwin uses the dominating spirit of David's dead mother to illustrate David's inability to embrace his homosexuality as a part of his true identity. The figure of David's dead mother represents David's true homosexual identity. David feels that she is always present and watching him. As the looming mother, she represents his true flesh and blood, or homosexuality, because he knows that no matter how hard he tries to reject and deny it, his true feelings and attractions to men are still present. Baldwin uses very specific imagery of his mother to illustrate David's attempts to reject his sexuality and how the feelings still linger within him. The images from David's nightmare about his mother clearly suggest that she is representative of his identity struggle. David recalls her image from his nightmare as "blind with worms, her hair as dry as metalstraining to press me against her body; that body so p...
