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Book 1, Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Another Country, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race in America
Love and Sexuality
High Art vs. Low Art
Alienation and New York City
Summary
Analysis
Eric sits naked in a garden in France, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. He has spent the last several years living with his lover, Yves, in the South of France. Eric’s time in France has been magical, and he is reluctant to return to New York for his Broadway show. At first, Eric did not want to return to the United States at all, but Yves convinced him that he must. The role in the show is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Eric cannot afford to pass up.
When Baldwin wrote Another Country, same-sex relationships were highly stigmatized in America and throughout most of the Western world. In order to live with a man comfortably, Eric had to go all the way to France where he knew no one. There, he has found a sort of paradise, though his original home is now calling him.
Themes
Eric knows Yves is right, so he plans to return to New York soon. Yves plans to join him once he settles in. Although Eric knows he has made the right decision career-wise, he wonders what time apart will do to his relationship with Yves. Yves assures him everything will be fine. Unlike Eric, Yves is eager to get out of Europe. Yves is not close to his family and has no problem leaving them behind. Yves’s mother was a sex worker during World War II, and the string of men she brought into Yves’s life during that time—some American, some German—has led Yves to resent her.
Yves, like most of the characters in the novel, did not have a pleasant upbringing. Just as Eric does not care for the United States, Yves does not particularly like France. He would prefer to run away from France, just as Eric has run away from the United States. However, just as Eric had no idea what awaited him in France, Yves cannot know what to expect in America. Eric worries that America will treat Yves as poorly as it has treated him.
Themes
Eric wonders about what it will be like to return to New York after having been away for so long. In particular, he wonders which friends will be around to welcome him back, and he wonders what they will make of his relationship with Yves. It has been a long time sing Eric has been in contact with his New York friends, especially following Rufus’s death. Eric found out about Rufus because Cass sent him a letter. He still has unresolved feelings about Rufus that he knows will come to the surface when he returns to New York.
It is unclear how much Cass knows about Rufus’s past. She seems to know that Eric is gay and had a relationship with Rufus, since she decided to write to him. However, it sounds like Eric did not express his sexuality openly to most of his friends. Eric is not worried about what his friends will think of Yves—rather, he is concerned about whether they will accept that he is gay.
Themes
Yves leaves Eric to go to town for groceries. While Yves is away, Eric contemplates his childhood in Alabama. Eric grew up wealthy, but he never had a close relationship with his parents. Instead, he was close to Grace, an African American cook who his parents hired. He also liked Henry, Grace’s husband, who his parents hired as a handyman. For reasons that are unclear to Eric, his parents fired Henry and Grace, which only made him like his parents less.
Eric grew up wealthy like Cass, though in a radically different environment. During Eric’s childhood, Jim Crow laws were in effect throughout the South and, generally speaking, Black people were treated even more like second-class citizens than they were in the North. Eric despises the South’s racism and his family’s role in it.
Themes
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Shortly after Eric’s parents fired Henry and Grace, Eric started exploring his sexuality. Eric had an idea that he might be gay, but he did not—or could not—put a name to it. He knew that he thought differently about women and men than the other boys at his school, and there was no one for him to talk to. Around this time, Eric took an interest in a Black boy named LeRoy, who he suspected was also gay (though he still does not refer to himself as such).
In the 1940s and 1950s—when Eric was growing up in Alabama—same sex relationships were outlawed, and the public considered anyone engaged in sexual activity with a member of the same sex to be a sinner. Eric would have had no one to talk to about his sexuality because the topic was so taboo.
Themes
One day, LeRoy took Eric aside because he noticed Eric was interested in him. LeRoy warned Eric that they could not keep spending time together because people would start to talk. Eric told LeRoy that he did not care what other people thought. LeRoy warned Eric that he was being foolish. Even if the town did not turn on Eric because of his race and his wealth, they would certainly turn on LeRoy.
Although Eric’s sexuality marginalizes him, he is still protected by his race and class. Meanwhile, LeRoy, is poor, Black, and gay; he has nothing and no one to prevent him from persecution. This is an eye-opening experience for Eric, who had never thought about the ways in which various forms of marginalization can intersect with each other.
Themes
Before they departed, LeRoy held Eric close and, for the first time, Eric explicitly acknowledged his sexual interest in men and felt like he understood himself better. Following his encounter with LeRoy, Eric moved to New York, a place where he could find more people like him without the social pressure of his small-town Alabama upbringing.
Eric’s interaction is an important moment for him because he begins to come to terms with his sexuality. Finally, he can locate his feelings in something (and someone) concrete.
Themes
Back in the present, Yves returns on his bicycle, holding alcohol and groceries. Yves and Eric talk about how difficult it will be to leave their cottage behind. Both of them have enjoyed living there together without having to worry about anything or anyone else. Yves sees the cottage as playing an important part of his social development; he learned that he could become more than a simple “street boy,” as his upbringing would dictate.
For both Yves and Eric, the cottage was a place they could escape to without having to worry about the judgement of other people. For Yves, it was the place where he developed into a mature adult, while for Eric it was the place he found himself after feeling lost following his relationship with Rufus.
Themes
Yves talks about how he used to be with so many terrible people, many of them women, before he encountered Eric. Eric is glad he and Yves have come together—he loves him very much. However, he fears a day will come when Yves does not need him anymore. Eric thinks about the many men in his past who used him for their own selfish purposes and then discarded him when they were done. He does not want his relationship with Yves to follow that pattern of chaos and pain.
In particular, Eric is probably thinking about his relationship with Rufus, which ended terribly. Although he does not think Yves will be abusive in the same way Rufus was, he does worry that—like Rufus—Yves’s motives in being with him are selfish. Perhaps Eric’s thoughts are paranoid, but he cannot help but feel them because of his past experiences.
Themes
