In Another Country the sharp outlines of character are dissolved by waves of uncontrolled emotion. In his 1965 essay about Baldwin’s work, Robert Bone wrote: The very private act of sex becomes a stage for their public frustrations to be played out. The relationships in Another Country are complicated and destructive because the characters can not separate their public selves from their private selves. Our lives are conducted in both the private and public sphere and “who we are” is defined by society just as much as by the individual. In Baldwin’s reality, we have relatively little control over our own identities. In a utopian, private world, “who they are” would be an amorphous concept based on their actions, but in Another Country Baldwin savagely reminds us that we do not live in a utopian, private world. They conform to and resent labels such as black, white, heterosexual, homosexual, faithful, unfaithful, victim and victor, trying to reconcile their behavior with “who they are”. These contradictions lead to self-loathing as they struggle, impossibly, to define themselves based on social parameters. There are marked contradictions between the way they feel and the way they act between what they think they feel, what they truly feel and what they want others to think they feel. They have contradictory feelings about their race, their gender, their sexuality. The characters in James Baldwin’s Another Country are plagued with contradictions. Sex and the Intrusion of the Public Persona in James Baldwin's Another Country
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