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

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.