Racial and sexual differences are compared and contrasted, both represented as areas for conflict that must be addressed en route to mature love. Facing each other without lies and perceiving the relationship realistically were much more important than which sexes were involved or how love was expressed, in Baldwin's opinion.… The whole racial situation, according to the novel, was basically a failure of love. Whether it was the central relationship between white Vivaldo and black Ida or the accompanying bisexual affairs involving most of the other leading characters, all were intended by Baldwin to illustrate how difficult he felt real love was in contemporary American society. Their relationship and others (including the earlier coupling of Rufus and Leona) represent a struggle for love amidst the obstacles of race, sex, and modern society.
The relationship between Ida and Vivaldo serves as a microcosm for the relationship between African Americans and white liberals. Īnother Country was unique at the time, in its attempt to explore race relations through romantic love instead of homosocial friendships. The concept of "another country" reflects not only the return of Eric to the United States from France, but also the feelings of alienation experienced by African Americans within the United States.
Throughout the novel, the effects of this internalized oppression are obvious: he is sexual with any person who is white - violently sexual, because he seeks power he feels disappointed in himself because of his proud Black sister Ida, and he avoids the support of his family during his last day of life. īecause Rufus is living in a predominantly racist era, his life is constantly affected by an internalization of this racism to the point where he hates himself. Rufus's death has been described as tantamount to murder. Themes Race and nationalism īaldwin called Rufus Scott "the black corpse floating in the national psyche," as well as a Christ figure-a living (and dying) symbol of suffering black men. At the novel's climax, Cass tells Richard about her affair with Eric, who in turn has a sexual encounter with Vivaldo, who himself learns about Ida's relationship with Ellis. Cass, who has become lonely due to Richard's writing career, has an affair with Eric after he arrives in New York. Ida starts having an affair with Ellis, an advertising executive who promises to help with her career as a singer. Everyone's relationships become strained in the course of the novel. Eric returns to the novel's social circle but is calmer and more composed than most of the group. Vivaldo begins a relationship with Rufus's sister Ida, which is strained by racial tension and Ida's bitterness after her brother's death.Įric, an actor and Rufus' first male lover, returns to New York after years living in France, where he met his longtime lover Yves.
Rufus's friends cannot understand the suicide, and experience some guilt over his death. The rest of the book explores relationships between Rufus' friends, family, and acquaintances in the wake of his death. Depressed, Rufus returns to Harlem and commits suicide, jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Rufus becomes habitually physically abusive of Leona, and she is admitted to a mental hospital in the South. Initially, the relationship is frivolous, but it turns more serious as they continue to live together. He begins a relationship with Leona, a white woman from the South, and introduces her to his social circle, including his closest friend, struggling novelist Vivaldo, his more successful mentor Richard, and Richard's wife Cass. The first fifth of Another Country tells of the downfall of jazz drummer Rufus Scott. The book uses a third-person narrator who is nevertheless closely aware of the characters' emotions. One author felt the title echoes lines in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta: įornication: but that was in another country Baldwin admired King, but sought to depict relationships deeper than King's "brotherly love." Title : 157īaldwin had returned to the United States in 1957, partly to cover the mounting Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.
: 195 In 1959, amidst growing fame, Baldwin received a $12,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support his work on the book. Despite his privately confessed reluctance to bring " Another Country, unfinished, into yet another country," Baldwin completed the book in Istanbul in 1962. Baldwin started writing Another Country in Greenwich Village in 1948 and continued to write the novel in Paris and again in New York.
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