Another Country: Mood 1 key example

This is apparent right from the start, as—although they're over by the end of the second chapter—the aftereffects of Rufus’s depressive torment and suicide permeate the novel. His suicide casts a lingering sense of emptiness over the entire novel for the reader. Indeed, Rufus’s hopelessness almost feels contagious, as characters contend with the unavoidable fear of White supremacy and violence and with anxiety about what the future holds. The weight of these troubles presses on many of the novel’s conversations. Many of the novel’s sex scenes explicitly combine images of desire, violence, and racial difference through characters’ thoughts.

There are also a lot of uneasy or silent moments that the reader is forced to experience “with” the characters. There’s an overwhelming feeling of profound discomfort and lack of belonging, even in the book’s least complicated scenes of tenderness between Ida and Vivaldo or Eric and Yves. It’s a novel full of characters who carry burdens they cannot share easily: by the end, it’s still unclear how either of the two remaining romantic pairs will resolve their issues. Through this ambiguity and the book’s emotionally intense plot, the reader engages in both Baldwin’s political message and  the promise of truth finally coming to the surface.