Race and nationalism
Baldwin 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.[5] Rufus's death has been described as tantamount to murder.[6][7]
Because 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. 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 in comparison to his proud Black sister Ida, and he avoids the support of his family during his last day of life.
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.[7]
Another Country was unique at the time, in its attempt to explore race relations through romantic love instead of homosocial friendships.[3]
Love
The relationship between Ida and Vivaldo serves as a microcosm for the relationship between African Americans and white liberals.[8] 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. According to Baldwin biographer W. J. Weatherby:[4]: 218
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. 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.
Racial and sexual differences are compared and contrasted, both represented as areas for conflict that must be addressed en route to mature love.[9] According to some readings, this complete unity represents "another country" and perhaps an impossible utopia.[3][10] Stefanie Dunning wrote:[7]
Rufus' death suggests that there is no black utopia, no place where he can escape the iniquities of racism. More importantly, Another Country suggests that we have not yet found a model for thinking outside the box that frames our discussions of interraciality and same-sex eroticism. It suggests, more importantly, that eliminating gender and racial difference will not solve the "problems" of difference either. The title of the novel suggests the wish for "another country," another nation, in which our racial and sexual selves are imagined and defined differently or perhaps where they are not defined at all. It is at once a question: another country, illustrating the futility of national crossings, and it is a wistful fantasy: another country, a mythic, imaginary and unattainable place where relationships are not fractured by difference.
Dunning argues that the novel's critique of nationalism extends to black nationalism, which still relies on a fantasy of authentic and heterosexual reproduction.[7]
Willing ignorance
One of the most significant themes in Another Country is one's willingness to ignore parts of reality (including oneself) that one finds unpleasant or ego-dystonic. Vivaldo is perhaps the most affected by this tendency. He also partially denies his own bisexuality. He fails to fully admit his attraction to Rufus. On the night of his death, Rufus went to Vivaldo and indicated a need for sexual love, but Vivaldo pretended not to recognize this need and later felt guilty, suspecting that he might have prevented Rufus's death. He does not see that his attraction to Ida potentially mirrors his attraction to Rufus. Also, despite mounting signs that Ida is involved in a career-advancing affair with the white TV producer Ellis, Vivaldo mostly denies this until the disillusioned Ida confesses to him herself in a cathartic scene near the end of the book.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, after considerable youthful struggles with self-acceptance of his homosexuality due to social ostracism in his hometown in Alabama, Eric eventually becomes the novel's most honest and open character. He admits that Rufus was abusive of Leona, that he actually does not reciprocate Cass's love, and that his love of Yves is genuine. This also makes him the book's calmest and most composed character. Only after a night with Eric does Vivaldo see the world more clearly and make tentative steps toward acceptance of his own bisexuality.
Most of the white characters in the book downplay or refuse to admit the racial tension surrounding them. Cass and Richard are shocked when a group of black boys beat up their sons. Ida constantly suspects Vivaldo of exploiting her because she is black and has known white men who seek out sexual relations specifically with black women. Vivaldo refuses to admit any of this, although it is indicated that it may be true of their relationship.
Professional jealousy
Richard and Vivaldo are jealous of one another as writers. Vivaldo essentially denies the value of Richard's first novel and is jealous that it is being published, while Richard is jealous of Vivaldo because Richard thinks his wife Cass sees suffering and a lack of commercial success as a sign of artistic integrity. Consequently, after Cass and Eric initiate their affair, Richard suspects she is seeing Vivaldo.
Also, Ida's beginning recognition as a jazz singer causes increased tension and jealousy between her and Vivaldo.
Black homosexual masculinity
In his 1968 essay "Notes On A Native Son", from his book Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver denounced the concept of interracial homosexuality and, in effect, acted as the mouthpiece for the hegemonic narrative that framed black homosexual masculinity in America in the 1960s. He expressed not so much a discomfort with homosexuality as with the power paradigm and ultimate feminization that ensues after the physical act of black men sexually submitting to white men:
It seems that many Negro homosexuals, acquiescing in this racial death-wish, are outraged and frustrated because in their sickness they are unable to have a baby by a white man. The cross they bear is that, already bending over and touching their toes for the white man, the fruit of their miscegenation is not the little half-white offspring of their dreams but an increase in the unwinding of their nerves – though they redouble their efforts and intake of the white man's sperm. (p. 102).
In the eyes of Cleaver, Rufus Scott of Another Country is a failure to his race because he fails to act as "the referent for masculinity, sexuality, and raciality" (Dunning 104). According to black nationalists of the time, the future of the black race is reliant upon reproduction. At the first Plenary Conference on Self Determination in 1981, a flyer read "Homosexuality does not produce children. [It] does not birth new warriors for liberation" (Cheney, 113). In sexually submitting to the white man, Rufus has fulfilled his own death-wish literally and figuratively because, according to Stephanie Dunning:[7]: 100
[T]o be both homosexual and black is to express a hatred for blackness.…In this construction, to be black is to be feminized and to be homosexual is to be castrated. Homosexuality, then, is the ultimate threat to being the man, since it presumably takes away that which makes you one: the impregnating phallus.
So Rufus is the embodiment of the pervasive, oppressive nationalist viewpoint that burdened and continues to burden homosexual men of color. Rufus is by no means a proponent of the black nationalist homophobia, but instead a victim to it. In his romantic relationship with his Southern white friend Eric, Rufus internalizes this concept that in "receiving" Eric, he is allowing Eric to dominate him; and yet, in Another Country, Baldwin professes and emphasizes that it is the vulnerability within this power paradigm in interracial same-sex relationships that will ultimately break down racial barriers. In reshaping masculinity and expectations of black men in particular, we can shift the power dynamic that leads to violence and aggression in men, particularly black men. In speaking about his relationship with Rufus, Vivaldo remarks:
Well, perhaps they had been afraid that if they looked too closely into one another, each would have found – he looked out of the window, feeling damp and frightened. Each would have found the abyss. Somewhere in his heart, the black boy hated the white boy because he was white. Somewhere in his heart, Vivaldo hated and feared Rufus because he was black. (p. 134)
With his privilege as a white man, Vivaldo is able to step back and see homosexual sex for what it is, which is an act of vulnerability and trust, rather than dominance and submission as seen through the eyes of Rufus.
