Final Paper

Reimagining The Myth of Home: Race, Family, and Belonging In James Baldwin's Another Country

1. Introduction

In his novel Another Country, James Baldwin deconstructs the notion of home and the idyllic, heteronormative vision of family in US society in mid-19th century New York. Published as a protest novel in 1962, Baldwin's work challenges social norms and surveys the public sphere while documenting the lives of both Black and white characters as they follow their aspirations and grapple with various societal dynamics and limitations. Rufus is plagued by emotional and physical dispossession, and this inability to set up a home for himself leads to his suicide. Secondly, Cass and Richard, initially introduced as a picture-perfect family, gradually fall apart due to growing dissatisfaction in their marriage. Lastly, Ida and Vivaldo, as an interracial couple in NYC during the 1950s, suffer constant external harassment, and it becomes unthinkable for them to establish domesticity. Another Country dismantles the safety and stability of the concept of home through Rufus' homelessness, Cass and Richard's failing marriage, and Ida and Vivaldo's struggling relationship.

2. Rufus' Displacement

Tremendously suffering from the absence of a permanent residence, Baldwin employs Rufus to dissect the notion of home in the novel. From the outset, he is introduced in a depressed state: "He had fallen so low," "he was broke," and "he had nowhere to go" (Baldwin 13). The repetition of simple, short phrases shows how Baldwin highlights the distraught and primitive state of Rufus' being, which is reduced to the search for absolute human necessities such as food and shelter. His need for a home and comfort from a loving partner is palpable within the first pages. Still, as the novel progresses, it becomes evident that his narcissistic tendencies isolate him from genuine emotional connections, resulting in deep-seated solitude and psychological unrest. Desperate and powerless, he acts violently towards the people around him as a consequence of the loss of control over his own life. Leona suffers the brunt of his abusive behavior: "He's just lost, and he beats me because he can't find nothing else to hit" (66). The use of 'nothing' shows the objectification Leona suffers at the hands of Rufus and how she is the repeated victim of his anger. Reddinger assesses that "Rufus's misogyny is underwritten by a racial rage" (121), as he both admires and despises his white partner. Odhiambo further states that instances of violence between the two are "rife with feelings filtered through a lens that affirms racist stereotypes about black men as sexual predators of white women" (71). Portrayed as an enraged and abandoned Black man, Baldwin utilizes Rufus' pain to show the extent to which the discriminatory US society damages his psyche. His plea for help to Vivaldo: "'Somebody's got to help me,' said Rufus at last, 'somebody's got to help me'" (Baldwin 73) expresses his urgency through repetition and spotlights the paradox that he deeply desires to fundamentally change his life while being utterly unable to do so. Rage and restlessness rule his psychological and physical state of being, and he expresses his frustrations to his friend: "All those white sons of bitches . . . They got the world on a string, man, and they tying that string around my neck, they killing me" (74). The systemic discrimination that Black people face in US society is conveyed here through the metaphor of a noose, which also alludes to the many lynchings that took place in the US and its racist past. Consequently, he feels he has no control over his life, and he vulgarly expresses this with the words: "Any bum on the Bowery can shit all over you because maybe he can't hear, can't see, can't walk, can't fuck - but he's white" (75). This enumeration brashly focalizes the origin of his despair, which is the systemic discrimination that he faces as an African-American man and which has left him lonely, violent, and homeless at the end of his life. Rufus is at wit's end from the suffering he has endured as a consequence of his racial identity: "He felt [B]lack, filthy, foolish" (84). The alliteration of 'f' creates a breathless sound, which highlights how deeply troubled and fatigued Rufus feels, and his description: "The uncaring earth, under the uncaring sky" (85), expresses through repetition that he feels excluded and abandoned as a Black man. Following his disconnect from reality and exclusion from society, Rufus "felt as removed from them . . . as he might have felt from a fence, a farmhouse, a tree, seen from a train window" (89), a metaphor that highlights the loss of control that he feels over his own life, as he feels like he is rushing along on a train that he can neither escape nor control and this imagery further develops into a mass murder fantasy: "Everything gone out of them but murder, breaking limb from limb and splashing in blood, with joy - for the first time, joy, joy" (91). This oxymoronic description of his violent vision crystalizes the extent to which his mind has turned to twisted fantasies to indulge in and enjoy as an escape from his loneliness and despair. Shortly before his suicide, he completely abandons humanity and ponders: "He could never go down into the city again" (93). Caught between the city of New York, which has forcefully evicted him, and the suburbs of New Jersey, which hold no space for him as a homeless Black man, he feels void of any hope and takes his own life. Rufus' physical displacement is the direct result of his internal instability, which grew as a consequence of the discrimination that he faced as an African-American man. Thus, Baldwin utilizes him to show how the absence of home can drive a person to the brink of insanity and death.

3. The Failure Of The White Nuclear Family

Secondly, Baldwin destabilizes the concept of home through the loss of Cass and Richard's heteronormative family dynamic. Following Rufus' suicide, an abrupt change in scenery introduces us to the idyllic vision of the white couple's home: "Cass sat on the living room floor with the Sunday papers and a cup of coffee" (94). They are presented as a wholesome, domestic couple living peacefully with their two sons, physically and emotionally sheltered from the troubles of Rufus and non-white communities. They are stereotypically characterized according to postwar 1950s heteronormative family propaganda, with Cass being predominantly emotional and frail while Richard is logical and distant. Her aspirations in life seem to be marriage and caring for her family, which aligns with the widespread portrayal of women at the time, which, as Potter states, "believed that successful motherhood required that a woman put her family's needs first by devoting her full time and energy to the household" (99). Cass is a paradigm of traditional female domesticity, and one of the most defining factors of her existence is her naive ignorance vis-a-vis other ethnicities. When purchasing a hat for Rufus' funeral, she suddenly finds herself the only white woman in her vicinity: "She realized she was mysteriously afraid: afraid of these people, these streets, the chapel to which she must return" (Baldwin 121). The enumeration and use of 'these' show her mentality and attitude towards African-Americans, whom she perceives as a distant group, separate from herself and her own life. Anxiously, she feels as if "they would call the police" (121). Her exaggerated panic is illogical and unfounded, illuminating her fear when she is the only white person in the room, which is a result of her sheltered, domestic life. While Richard's career takes off, her happiness dwindles: "Something icy had touched her" (231), symbolizing his cold, distant behavior towards her. As the novel progresses, it dawns on her how Richard primarily treats her as a maid and not as an equal partner: "I sit in that house like - like a housekeeper. I take care of the kids and make meals and scrub toilet bowls and answer the phone" (270). Listing her chores, Cass vocalizes her frustration with Richard and the growing distance and hostility between them. The end of their marriage is in sight when Cass starts an affair with Eric, a dynamic frowned upon by most people, catalyzing her awakening from a sheltered housewife to an independent woman. For the first time in her life, she ponders the role of the police in society and realizes how, to her, they are "neither friends nor enemies; they were part of the landscape" (285). This metaphorical image of the police being like a neutral background in her life highlights how she, as a sheltered and ignorant white housewife, has never had to think twice about the presence or intentions of a police officer. Eventually, Richard confronts Cass, a conversation whose beginning refers to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: "She thought, insanely . . . of Cleoptra's lament for Antony: His face was as the heavens" (358). A sense of impending doom is instilled through this reference as Cass criticizes her husband's integrity, and his anger peaks in physical abuse. The loss of home is complete, and the next time Cass appears in the novel, her appearance and character are fundamentally transformed. Despite stating that she feels dead, Eric remarks how "her voice was very light and calm" (393) and "she stood as erect as a soldier" (395). Likening her to a soldier, this powerful simile calls attention to her character's radical transformation. Cass attempted to fulfill her duty as a housewife to the best of her abilities, but in the end, she lost. "He watched her face from which the youth was now, before his eyes, departing; her girlhood, at last, was falling away from her" (397). The metaphor of her youthful state of girlhood and the innocence of it falling from her like a veil symbolizes the reveal of her new self. She has departed from a naive and repressed life following the loss of her home and must now face all facets of reality. Baldwin utilizes Cass and Richard's marriage to denounce the postwar, heteronormative concept of home by highlighting the impact of the loss of stability when built on unstable foundations made up of mistrust and ignorance and assisted by harmful patriarchal behaviors.

4. The Impossibility of Domestic Stability

Finally, Baldwin relies on the interracial relationship between Ida and Vivaldo, who struggle severely to build and maintain a healthy relationship to destabilize the construct of home. Friendly but distant and always aware of her surroundings, she, as a Black woman, experiences reality radically different from her partner, Vivaldo, a white man. Even though he feels proud to be with her, other white people judge aggressively. However, "her smile suggested, these people, the citizens of the world's most bewildered city, were so common that they were all but invisible" (147). This hyperbole shows that she feels untouchable and views the judgement of other people as inferior and of no substance. The simile: "Their passage raised small clouds of male and female hostility which blew into their faces like dust" (147) compares the hatred to dust to clarify that it does not pose a problem to the couple as other people and their opinions are like dirt to them. Their relationship commences with gentleness and honesty: "I want you to be with me. I want that more than I've ever wanted anything in the world" (150). This hyperbole expresses the urgency and genuineness with which Vivaldo wishes for them to be together despite society's judgements. Nevertheless, the first problems arise when it becomes clear that she experiences and perceives discrimination and threats more easily and frequently than Vivaldo can comprehend. Hostility arises between them stemming from the differences in racial identity, and subsequently, establishing a home for them becomes increasingly difficult as even in their apartment, they can rarely find peace: "The landlord and the neighbours and the cop on the corner disapproved of Ida's presence" (276). This enumeration shows how many people and institutions of power are stacked against the couple, making it impossible for them to build a peaceful and comfortable residence. As the relationship drifts apart due to the overpowering force of systemic discrimination, a tension-loaded and mistrusting dynamic develops: "great areas of unspoken, vast minefields which neither dared to cross" (315). Baldwin utilizes the symbol of a minefield to show how the couple is battling an invisible war against various external pressures, making it difficult for them to settle down emotionally. As they both desperately attempt to understand the other, Vivaldo ruminates that: "Love was a country he knew nothing about" (291), a metaphor which conveys that, like a foreign country, he fundamentally does not understand Ida and his attempts to do so only deepen their mutual dissatisfaction. Salenius judges that Baldwin utilizes their troubled dynamic to show how Ida and Vivaldo's "sexuality is used to explore the refusal and acceptance of difference" (891). As the novel progresses and Ida opens up to Cass, it becomes clear that the root cause for the tension in their relationship is Vivaldo's inability to understand Ida fully: "There's no way in the world for you to find out, what it's like to be a [B]lack girl in this world" (Baldwin 341). This matter-of-fact statement shows that Ida knows that white people, including Vivaldo, will never be able to comprehend her view of the world. She further elaborates on this by explaining: "You don't know that behind all them dainty trees and shit, people are screwing and fixing and dying" (341). This stark contrast is supposed to broaden Cass' limited view of reality, but she struggles to see what Ida sees because she is trapped in her identity as a sheltered, white housewife: "She saw only the trees and the lights and the grass and the twisting road and the shape of the buildings beyond the park" (341). Where Cass sees an innocent and relaxing park, Ida sees a dark and twisted parallel reality filled with traumatic scenes. Serving as a parallelism for Vivaldo and her relationship, it explains her recurring accusations and hostility towards her white partner. As a result, Ida remarks: "Wouldn't you hate all white people if they kept you in prison here?" (343). This symbolizes that her life in NYC feels like a prison enclosing her in an environment that continuously discriminates against her and all Black people and makes it impossible for her to build a stable foundation. Thorsson states: "Heterosexual relationships, regardless of race, are never spaces of possibility in the novel: Ida and Vivaldo betray and resent one another" (617). However, while it is undoubtedly true that the couple faces utmost discriminating external pressures, the novel's ending challenges Thorsson's pessimistic notion. Another Country ends with a frank and fruitful conversation between the couple, uncovering the rifts of their relationship, allowing Baldwin to end the novel on a hopeful note. Animating the couple to start afresh, their fight permits them to share a moment of genuine understanding and openly agree to be there for each other in their attempt to build a home. Thus, Another Country dismantles the notion of home by exemplifying the difficulties of creating stability for Vivaldo and Ida due to overarching societal discrimination.

5. Conclusion

To conclude, Another Country uniquely deconstructs the concept of home via three different dynamics: the absence, the loss, and the attempt at building one. Rufus suffers from the absence of a home as a result of the systemic discrimination that he faces as a Black man and the physical and psychological instability it has caused him. Cass and Richard's home falls apart gradually, thus demonstrating the loss of the idyllic 1950s heteronormative family. Lastly, the novel highlights the struggles of establishing a home using Ida and Vivaldo to portray the external struggles and internal hostility that prevent it. Baldwin utilizes his work to criticize and disrupt both the harmful postwar, heteronormative family propaganda and the violently racist system of American society, which exiles and abandons African-American communities to this day.

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6. Works Cited

Baldwin, James. Another Country. London: Penguin Books, 2001. Print.

David, N., Odhiambo. "James Baldwin's Another Country as an Abstract Machine." Pacific Coast Philology, 52 (2017).:69-87. doi.org/10.5325/pacicoasphil.52.1.0069.

Potter, Sarah. Everybody Else: Adoption and the Politics of Domestic Diversity in Postwar America. University of Georgia Press, 2014. books.google.nl/books?id=RAHU CgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT6&ots=LR0MQotZ6l&dq=us%20postwar%20white%20heteronor mative%20family&lr&pg=PT6#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Reddinger, Amy. “‘Just Enough for the City’: Limitations of Space in Baldwin’s Another Country.” African American Review, vol.43, no.1, 2009, pp. 117–130, doi.org/10.1353/afa.0.0018.

Sirpa, Salenius. "Marginalized Identities and Spaces: James Baldwin’s Harlem, New York." Journal of Black Studies, 47 (2016).:883-902. doi.org/10.1177/0021934716658862.

Thorsson, Courtney. "James Baldwin and Black Women's Fiction." African American Review 46.4 (2013): 615-631. www.jstor.org/stable/24589858.