James Baldwin's Come Out the Wilderness

This study will examine James Baldwin's portrayal of interracial relationships in the story "Come Out the Wilderness" (from the collection Going to Met the Man) and in the novel Another Country. The study will focus on the relationships between Paul and Ruth in "Come Out the Wilderness" and Rufus and Leona and Ida and Vivaldo in Another Country. The relationship between Paul and Ruth is far more simple than the other two relationships, and Baldwin's attitude toward that relationship seems clearly judgmental. The two interracial relationships in Another Country are more complex and it is not nearly so clear what Baldwin's attitude is toward them.

Paul in "Come out the Wilderness" is the epitome of the victimizer as white man, and Ruth is the epitome of the victim as black female. Ruth never knows Paul in any significant way, as white or as man, because she does not know herself, as black or as woman. She sees him through the illusion of her fantasies white men, in both negative and positive terms. She immediately shows her ambivalence toward Paul on the first page of the story. First, she says that his hairy body proves that whites are less evolved than blacks who have less hair. Then she compares him to the extraordinariness of the sun and to a statue by Michelangelo. Yet, as badly as he treats her, as disrespectful and uncaring as he is toward her, she is dependent on him and is terrified of losing him. In this passage she worries as he leaves the house late at night:

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l that Baldwin means to show that there is a possibility for love and respect between black men and white women, and between white men and black women. Racial differences in the novel, unlike in the story, are shown to be merely one of the many potential stumbling blocks present, rather than the basis of the relationship as in the Paul-Ruth couple. This does not mean that the characters in the novel are colorblind. For example, after Rufus and Leona have a small difference of opinion over a racist look from a boy, and after Vivaldo has a playful difference with a white woman, Rufus muses on interracial relationships: He wondered if he and Leona would dare to make such a scene in public, if such a day could ever come for them. No one dared to look at Vivaldo, out with any girl whatever, the way they looked at Rufus now; nor would they ever look at the girl the way they looked at Leona. The lowest whore in Manhattan would be protected as long as she had Vivaldo on her arm. This was because Vivaldo was white (Baldwin, Another, 30-31). However, this awareness of racial reality in America is a double-edged sword. On one level, it creates tension in the two relationships because of the anxiety and resentment it produces, but at the

Category: Literature - J