Baldwin attempts to deal honestly with a number of sexual relationships most of which were taboo to previous writers. In Another Country it is suggested that security, order and common sense are illusions, and that only people like Rufus, Vivaldo, Cass and Eric, who submit themselves to the mystery and chaos of their emotions, are truly alive…. For Baldwin and his characters, sexual experience involves an entry into an unknown violent country…. Most people fear this journey into the unknown and never dare to examine the reality of their sexual impulses. In his treatment of sex, Baldwin has much in common with the writers examined by Mario Praz in The Romantic Agony. The descent into sexual experience is a journey undertaken only by certain heroic kinds of people towards a truth which is both painful and beautiful. In the novel sex is linked with images of infection, disease, poison, yet it is only through sex that the characters can overcome their isolation, and express their tenderness for each other. (pp. 116-17)
For Baldwin, therefore, to live, to perceive reality, is to submit oneself to suffering and chaos. Breakdown, neurosis, even suicide are a proper reaction to the human condition, for otherwise we are escaping from the truth. (p. 117)
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