Another Country: Idioms 2 key examples

The simile in Baldwin’s description here compares the buildings to phalluses and spears. This immediately frames them as representations of dominance and aggression. These architectural forms reinforce patriarchal power and White supremacy, as the towering “phalluses” and weapons make humans seem comparatively tiny. From his perspective on the pavement, Rufus also views the buildings as instruments of control. He knows that important decisions and powerful financial operations are occurring behind their imposing walls and also knows that he has no way into that world. Baldwin’s choice to describe the towers as being either “blunt” or “sharp” reveals that Rufus sees them as tools of enforcement or of destruction. The skyscrapers are objects with a purpose, and that purpose is aggressive and relentless. The nighttime setting amplifies the sense of power these buildings represent. They create an atmosphere of surveillance, as though they are “guarding” what lurks inside.

The idiom “the city which never slept” is usually used in a light-hearted way to reflect the business and vivacity of New York’s constant, humming energy. However, here it makes the city seem even more oppressive. Baldwin shows that, for men like Rufus, New York’s “sleeplessness” also means that it’s impossible to find any rest or peace while they are there. There’s no reprieve from the watchful eyes of the unlit towers or what their presence stands for.

The scene that Vivaldo is somewhat casually describing here is horrifying. The idioms he chooses add to the story’s casual delivery. He describes the young man he and his friends kidnap as being “green with fear" when he realizes what is about to happen to him. The idiom implies that their victim was so frightened he looked pale and nauseous. After they gang-rape him they also beat him violently and extensively and leave him naked on the floor of a garage in the Brooklyn winter night.

The situational irony here, of course, lies in the fact that Vivaldo is explaining an act he and his posse did in order to prove their own masculinity. Kidnapping a man they decided was “queer” and forcing him to perform oral sex on each of them while the others watched was, in Vivaldo’s mind, intended to prove how much he hated “queers.” Soliciting and receiving oral sex from a person of the same gender would not, in the general case, be considered a typically heterosexual act. However, Vivaldo tells this story bluntly to Cass as though challenging her to realize how masculine and heterosexual he is.