her. John comes to accept his specialness, "for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father" (20).
One can see the beginnings of homosexual behavior, because John shows an extraordinary amount of animosity toward his father, going beyond the Oedipal stages. "He lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed" (21).
John's father, who cannot control his desires, is contrasted by John's mother, a stoical character whom the author idealizes in a number of key sections. John has a true love for his mother, and he fantasizes that "her face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that had been hers in a photograph he had seen once. Young and proud . . ." (22).
Baldwin had nearly two decades to assimilate the experiences of his youth,
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