Identity, Sexuality, and Genocide in "The Normal Heart"

Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart has a clear political agenda. Focusing on the need for the gay community to build an identity based on something other than the dominant cultural conceptions of "gayness," the play gives a blueprint for a new identity based in active warfare against the dominant culture. This new identity is necessary because the dominant cultural notions by which gay people are defined, and define themselves, are killing them. Promiscuity, unsafe sex, and indiscriminate sex, spread the deadly AIDS virus.

An attempt to prove these concepts requires close analysis of the play's structure. The developing action of the play involves Ned's one-man attempt to create a new identity for the gay community. The climax comes when Ned finds that new identity for himself. The identities of the play's characters tend to align themselves with a specific sector of the gay population, which to some extent gets in the way of Kramer's message. At the same time, this specificity more effectively communicates the conflict of the play: the battle between Ned's idea of identity and those of the organization he creates. By highlighting one group, Kramer succeeds in implying the complications of the larger political picture. The outcomes of this conflict are twofold -Ned's triumphant emotional journey and the continuing journey of the organization he creates.

Ned's journey begins in the office of Emma, a doctor attempting to diagnose the AIDS virus. Here Ned starts moving towards activism, spurred by Emma, who says that she's "frightened that nobody important is going to give a damn because it (AIDS) seems to be happening only to gay men. Who cares if a faggot dies? Does it occur to you to do anything about it. Personally?" (Kramer 22). Here the word 'faggot' gives a significant emphasis to Emma's rhetoric, and serves as a tool to get Ned's attention. Emma needs Ned to "tell gay men to stop having sex" (26). Ned sidesteps some more, but Emma finally gets him talking about his personal opinions concerning gay politics, giving her an opening when he describes his views as "politically incorrect" (25). Emma does not need to work on Ned for long, for Craig's sudden illness secures his personal involvement in getting Emma's message out to the gay community.

Either Ned had already been considering this idea, or else it quickly becomes ingrained in his character, for he is soon more than a messenger. His rejection of sex becomes absolute, and he criticizes Felix for his free-wheeling attitudes, asking if his great goal is "a constant Fire Island vacation. Party, party; fuck, fuck. Maybe you can give me a few trendy pointers on what to wear" (41). Following this conflict, Felix makes a statement that begins to form Ned's concept of gay identity when he comments that Ned's novel "was all about a man desperate for love and a relationship, in a world filled with nothing but casual sex" (43).

Dominant cultural conceptions of what it means to be gay are intimately involved with sex. As Bruce says, "the entire gay political platform is fucking" (47). The gay community has built itself on the freedom to "make love whenever, wherever..." (97). Having worked so hard to construct an identity based around sex, as Mickey has for "fifteen years," the gay community is unwilling to listen to Ned's cries to end promiscuity. When Ned tells Mickey "more sex isn't more liberating. And having so much sex makes finding love impossible" (51). Ned's focus for a new gay identity starts to come into sharper focus. Abandoning sex is one thing, but Ned begins to see managing sex with monogamous relationships as a healthy alternative to the "orgy rooms" (98). However, the gay population does not see Ned's view as a viable alternative - as seen when Ned tells that "(he) ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in years in the subway, and I said 'Hello, how are you?' he started screaming, 'You're giving away all our secrets, you're painting us as sick, you're destroying homosexuality-and then he tried to slug me" (57). Replacing sex with love and monogamous, meaningful relationships provides a major focus for Ned's new definition of gay identity. His personal drive for creation in the gay community becomes an extension of his personal need for that kind of relationship with Felix.

Creating this identity becomes part of Ned's journey, but getting it accepted becomes a war, as already noted in the comments of Ned's opponents. Ned fights a battle against the organization that he created as great as the battle he fights against public apathy. His organization wants to work from the inside of the organizations that oppress them, whereas Ned believes in pro-active warfare to change the existing systems from without. He compares the organization's methods to those of the "Jewish leaders, relying on their contacts with people in high places, [who] were still, quietly, from the inside, attempting to persuade them when the war was over" (40). In Ned's view, nothing gets done in politics through passive action, from 'working from the inside.' To Ned, everything is a fight, and cooperation with the oppressors is destruction. He says in the same scene that "The American Jews knew exactly what was happening, but everything was downplayed and stifled. Can you imagine how effective it would have been if every Jew in America had marched on Washington? Proudly!"(42).

The organization's will to remain passive and uninvolved politically expresses itself as a primary attitude in Ned's organization. Ned's board of directors is unwilling to become politically involved - just willing to nurse the dying. They are incapable of representing anyone, as "not one of them will appear on TV or be interviewed" (64). Ned continues his criticism in a conversation with Emma, saying that

"Bruce is in the closet; Mickey works for the Health Department; he starts shaking every time I criticize them- they wont even put out leaflets listing all the symptoms; Richard, Dick, and Lennie owe their jobs somehow to the mayor..." and "the board doesn't want any sex recommendations at all. No passing along anything that isn't a hundred percent certain" (71)..

Ned's dissatisfaction both expresses his will to fight an aggressive war on the public front and also the lack of will in his organization to do just that. Later on, Ned has a conversation with Bruce about political warfare, asking him if he has

any vision of what we could become? A powerful national organization effecting change! Bruce, you must have been a fighter once. When you were a green beret, did you kill people?

Bruce: a couple of times...

Ned: There are going to be a lot more sick people out there if we don't get our act together. Did you give up combat completely (my emphasis)?

Bruce: Don't you fucking talk to me about combat! I just fight different from you.

Ned: I haven't seen your way yet. (75-6)

As the president of the organization, Bruce himself does not have the will to fight an all-out war. After this interchange, Bruce tells Tommy that "I didn't have the fight, he had the fight. It's always Ned who has the fight (my emphasis)" (76). Ned fights a one-man war against an organization hostile to itself, passive, impotent, and falling on the past.

The conflict comes to a head when the board dismisses Ned from the organization. Ned's position on his fight and gay identity becomes truly clear and defined in his ensuing monologue.

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold... These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.... The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there, but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what is in our minds and hearts and all of our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined (my emphasis) as one of the men who fought the war. Being defined by our cocks is literally killing us. Must we all be reduced to becoming our own murderers? Why couldn't you and I, Bruce Niles and Ned Weeks, have been leaders in creating a new definition of what it means to be gay? I blame myself as much as you. Bruce, I know I'm an asshole. But please, I beg you, don't shut me out. (109-10).

The new gay identity then is based not on sexuality alone - but instead becomes based on real relationships, love, and the concept that gay people of power and intellect have created a rich culture and tradition to draw on - one that can bring the respect from society necessary to snatch lives back from AIDS.

The need for that respect is apparent. Ned's monologue does not focus on monogamy or healthy relationships, though these also have importance. It focuses instead on defining a queer culture that can produce political results, as opposed to one centered on sexual preference alone.

The problem with the definition of that culture lies not in the central idea that there have been gay people of power and intellect from which it is possible to construct an image, but rather the identities Ned uses for that purpose. There are few African Americans in his list, few Latinos, and no representatives at all from the East. Their political counterparts, lesbians, are not mentioned at all in the list, and are mentioned but once in the play. His list consists predominantly of white, English, male members of the Western literati. This is consistent with the male characters in the play - white males.

This list also has something to do with socioeconomic class. The members of the list are middle-class. This is also consistent with the play's characters: middle-class, with a stable job (which those in the organization fear losing), and have enough free time and money to devote to activist causes. Mickey is the only one to notice how non-diverse the organization is when he says he's "worried this organization might only attract white bread and middle-class. We need blacks" (44). Tommy seconds the idea, but it is never heard of thereafter. Lesbians are rejected with the same one-comment dismissal. Mickey asks haltingly "...and how...do you feel about lesbians? Bruce says to this: "Not very much, I mean, they're...something else" (45).

The denial calls into question the universality of Ned's definition, but is forgivable for several reasons. First, it is impossible to deny that Ned is white, middle-class, and therefore it stands to reason that he identifies with other Western, white, middle-class males. Ned's bias does not hide itself, and Kramer makes no attempt to hide it. Secondly, personal focus on one sector of the gay community adds to the personal power of the play. The microcosmic viewpoint brings home the struggle of Ned and his organization far better than a grand epic that claimed universal appeal.

The climactic outcomes of this split, though not applied universally by definition, certainly have ground-breaking effects for the entire gay community - down to the individual experiences of Ned and Felix.

The organization that dismissed Ned has its end in becoming what Ned most despised: insiders trying to convince oppressive organizations of their cause's importance. The last scene of the play shows Ned, in his last discussion with Felix, describing "a meeting at the Bishop's" with all the gay leaders, "including Bruce and Tommy. I wasn't allowed in. I went in to the men's room of the rectory and the Bishop came in and as we stood there peeing side by side I screamed at him 'What kind of house of God are we in?'" (117). The Catholic Church considers homosexuality to be a sin, and the Pope would be the only hope of changing that attitude. The organization has adopted the same tactics as the American Jewry in WWII.

As for Ned and Felix, their climax takes Ned's dream of monogamy into reality. As Felix lies dying of AIDS, a simple marriage is performed:

We are gathered here in the sight of God to join together these two men. They love each other very much and want to be married in the presence of their family before Felix dies. I can see no objection. This is my hospital, my church. Do you, Felix Turner, take Ned Weeks- (117)

Here Ned's triumph becomes evident. Despite his defeat in the organization, Ned has succeeded in what he set out to do: creating a new identity. This marriage finally replaces sexuality with love in a ceremony supposedly specific to straight men and women. The fact that this ceremony takes place in a hospital, in the company of straight family and friends, emphasizes the common humanity of all the people in the room. It also gives a sense of urgency to the occasion coupled with the hope that it will happen elsewhere before it is too late. As Ned says at the end of the play:

Why didn't I fight harder! Why didn't I picket the White House, all by myself if nobody would come. Or go on a hunger strike. I forgot to tell him something. Felix, when they invited me to Gay Week at Yale, they had a dance...In my old college dining hall, just across the campus from that tiny freshman room where I wanted to kill myself because I thought I was the only gay man in the world-they had a dance. Felix, there were six hundred young men and women there. Smart, exceptional young men and women. Thank you, Felix. (118)

Hope for the future pervades this statement, along with a sense that the obstacles of the community are changing, that conditions are getting better. Instead of holing up, the students are uniting in the knowledge of their common identity.

This play traces the path both of that new gay identity, and pounds home the message that apathetic pacifism will get the gay community nowhere but dead. Whilst the core of the new identity must be one of love, not promiscuity, gay pride should be based on the recognition of queer culture throughout history as one of achievement and power. As love replaces sex, and pride replaces shame, a powerful new political power will emerge: a respected power, because of its culture, a united power large enough to bear reckoning with, a power willing to attack, willing to defend, and most of all, willing to conquer the apathetic stance of a government willing to let it die. This vision, then as now, remains a work in progress. As more groups fight to legalize gay marriage, and as more knowledge than ever before disperses about the threat of AIDS, the discourse in the public eye has changed. A slow change, but change nonetheless.

Works Cited

Kramer, Larry. The Normal Heart. New York: Grove/Atlantic Publishing Inc., 1985.