The Normal Heart By Larry Kramer: Play Analysis

In the play, The Normal Heart, by Larry Kramer. The reader is drawn into the emotional and physical aspect of AIDS, that has plagued the gay society in New York City in the 1980’s. Ned Weeks, who is one of the main character closely based on Larry Kramer; is a gay writer and activist who begins to try and raise awareness for a disease that is destroying only a certain group of people: The gays. The play explores all aspects of not only the disease itself but the emotional bounds that gay men must struggle through: Identity, loss, fear, acceptance, and love. Although Ned means to bring positive change, his radical agenda and straightforwardness brings dissention between the members of the organization and cause him to not be a good activist. As

For example, by accusing people of their unwillingness to help their cause, Ned forces the importance of finding a cure for AIDS further into the ground. However, when a person loses friends to an awful disease every day and no one in the outside world acknowledges the crisis, it infuriates him. Because of this, his activism is often malicious in speech: “I said we’re all cowards! I said rich gay will give thousands to straight charities before they’ll give us a dime.” Ned’s use of this profound and judgmental tone, often counteracts the ideas he has, and leads him to be cast aside as having a irrelevant and far fetched opinion. Ned also hurts the gay community and outkasts them even by trying to insist that gay men should not have sex. Although there is good intentions behind this, it was feared that this would alarm people outside of the gay community. However, one of the reasons it was hard for Ned to be a good activist was because of the emotional strains that drowned him every day. One of the reasons he was so one minded when speaking to people was because of the impact AIDS has had on his