Throughout the novel, the struggle David faces with his family, friends and loved ones, all relates to him not being about to accept or come to terms with his identity. Instead, it feels like a roller coaster of emotions… “I don't know, now, when I first looked at Hella and found her stale, found her body uninteresting, her presence grating. It seemed to happen all at once—I suppose that only means that it had been happening for a long time.” (Baldwin) David introduces his confusion in the beginning of the narrative when he talks about Hella.
David’s relationship with his family is characterized as distance and his feels as though they would not understand him. The relationship with David’s father is unique. David’s father wants them to be like ‘buddies.” Tough David says, “I wanted distance of father and son, which would have permitted me to love him.” After the accident, David opens up with his father crying admitting his
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David describes his aunt, “There she was, dressed, as they say, to kill, with her mouth redder than any blood, dressed in something which was either the wrong color, or too tight, or too young, the cocktail glass in her hand threatening, at any instant, to be reduced to shards, to splinters, and that voice going on and on like a razor blade on glass. When I was a little boy and I watched her in company, she frightened me” (Baldwin12). The relationship with David’s Aunt Ellen is distance and not so pleasant. Aunt Ellen helped take care of him after his mother passed away. David’s mother died when David was five years old. “They concluded that the death of my mother had this unsettling effect on my imagination and perhaps they thought that I was grieving for her. And I may have been, but if that is so, then I am grieving still” (Baldwin 11). David has no memories of her, though he has nightmares about