Lost and Forgotten
Leona’s tragedy will not leave Rufus’ mind. The heady cocktail of guilt, shame, and self-loathing cannot allow him to return to his old life, his family, and his friends. He was “so tired, he had fallen so low,” that he “scarcely had energy to be angry.” That evening, just like many others, he spent in a cinema theater, hiding from cold weather, stares of passersby and his own thoughts in the darkness of an auditorium. The Italian film “was approaching a climax,” so he “stumbled down the endless stairs into the street.” Rufus “was hungry, his mouth felt filthy.” He was “broke” and he “had nowhere to go” (3). This imagery creates a feeling of despair, and foreshadows Rufus's death.
Jazz Lover
“Seven months ago, a lifetime ago,” Rufus had been playing a gig “in one of the new Harlem spots owned by a Negro.” It “had been a good night, everybody was feeling good.” “Because the joint was new, it was packed" and "All kind of people had been there that night.” There were “white and black, high and low, people who came for the music and people who spent their lives in joints for other reasons.” There were “a couple of minx and a few near-minx” and “a lot of God-knows-what shining at wrists and ears and necks and in the air.” The Black people “were having a good time because they sensed that, for whatever reason, this crowd was solidly with them.” The white people “were having a good time because nobody was putting them down for being white.” There was “some pot on the scene and he was a little high” (7-8). This imagery helps to immerse the reader in Rufus's life before Leona, as well as the general atmosphere of the Village in the 1950s.
Late Night Bar
Vivaldo takes Rufus to a bar, and as it turns out, they are not the only ones who decided to spend that lovely night in a bar, for it was “terribly crowded.” There were “advertising men,” “drinking double shots of bourbon or vodka, on the rocks." There were college boys, “their wet fingers slippery on the beer bottles.” Several “lone men stood near the doors or in the corners, watching the drifting women.” The college boys, “gleaming with ignorance and mad with chastity, made terrified efforts to attract the feminine attention.” “Some of the men were buying drinks for some of the women” and they “faced each other over the smiles which were pitched, with an eerie precision, between longing and contempt” (72). Just like in previous imagery, this one depicts the unique atmosphere of late night bars, but also suggests that Rufus's state of mind is rapidly disintegrating—here the imagery is tense, a little hostile, oppressive.
Light
Baldwin paints eerily beautiful and unsettling images of New York, which reflect the characters' states of mind. He writes, "The light seemed to fall with an increased hardness, examining and inciting the city with unsparing violence, like the violence of love, and striking from the city's grays and blacks a splendor ass of steel on steel. In the windows of tall buildings flame wavered, alive, in ice" (142). Here Vivaldo is out with Ida, full of keen excitement, but the imagery suggests that even though all seems well, if the light were to reveal the truth as it did the city, their "love" might really just be "violence"—as it proves to be when they move forward in their tumultuous relationship.
