CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY
A. Object of the Study
The object of the study is The Normal Heart, a play written by Larry Kramer and it was first published in 1985 and first performed in April 21
st
1985 at The Public Theatre, New York City. The book that the researcher use entitled The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays first published
in 2007 with a length of 256 pages. The story revolves around Ned Weeks, a gay journalist whom at the latter stage of the play became a gay activist in the
history of New York. According to the story in the play, AIDS has impacted homosexual to be aware to it. The first movement as a gay unity started when
one of them died in a horrible way. From that moment on, several gay workers had to become an activist in order to bring awareness among their own people
which eventually also takes their lives one by one. Bruce Niles, a closeted homosexual, is one of the activists. When the lover of Bruce Niles died, Bruce
started to work as an activist and help Ned Weeks with his campaign for gay people to stop having sex. They receive a lot of provocation and disbelieve
from their own people. After a couple of months, gay people kept on dying. Ned Weeks was provoked by this and the gay liberation movement and AIDS
awareness are him and his colleagues‘ main focus for the rest of the story
New York, along with San Francisco, and Los Angeles, became the ground zero of the first wave of AIDS epidemic. At that time, there was a
believe that AIDS could eradicate the entire population of homosexual men and the gay community. In the play, one of the problem that faced by
homosexual men is how the AIDS campaign had a clash with the gay liberation a decade back.
Gay men are intensely urban and only a few of them that lives in a country free by choice on a permanent basis. Most of them live in a city because of the
variety that city offers them to enjoy one‘s live. Based on the play, the setting of the place is at New York. The famed city is also known for the violent
demonstration that occurs in 1969 that widely considered as the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and became the early
stages of the LGBT rights movement. In 2014, The Normal Heart was adopted to a movie with the same title and receive a hugely amount of positive reaction
from all layers of the society. Most of the actors who involves with the movie
itself are publicly open gay. B.
Approach of the Study
Kategori