How to break a man
Bruce Niles, The Normal Heart
[This essay contains spoilers regarding the play.]
It is impossible to pass the week, and the celebration of The Normal Heart 5th anniversary, without mentioning the Bruce Niles’ monologue remembering his lover’s final moments.
The monologue is an essential part of the play. It is moving. Those who were lucky enough to witness Lee Pace, live on the stage, performing the monologue sworn by his “pitch perfect” tone of voice which gave more power to the monologue, were truly moved.
Imagine this: You have just lost your loved one, you are barely holding it together, everything seems to be working against you and nothing (and no one) seems to give you a break or to support you…
This is how Niles was feeling in the moment of the monologue.
He felt broken,guilty and helpless. Do not blame him though, you would feel the same if you are in the same situation.
By now, you are wondering - if you did not get the chance to read the script already! - “What happened? How did he end up in that state? What does it take to BREAK a man?” Well, his lover is taken away from him in front of his own eyes and he can not do anything to stop it or prevent it. Well that breaks a man in half!
His lover, Albert, dies of AIDS and Bruce blames himself for what happened to the man he loved. Albert, is the third man Bruce was in a relationship with who died and that broke Bruce even harder.
In Bruce’s monologue to Ned, he is at the edge of tears, you can feel him wearing his heart on his sleeve while describing his lover’s last stages before he left this earth. What makes it more heart-wrecking is (if you are lucky enough to watch Lee performing the monologue) how you can see the tears running from Lee’s eyes during the monologue, his voice becomes choked as if someone is stabbing him in the heart a million times over while the words are coming out of his mouth. He portrays Ned’s feelings perfectly, and the audience are left either in awe and silence or in pure admiration and applause…
Albert, oh dear Albert! He suffered not only during his last stages of life but also after his death, and we know that when Bruce describes how the hospital doctors refused to examine him and put a cause of death on his death certificate. What made it worse was that his corpse was disposed next to the garbage like he had NO human value… and all that happened right in front of Bruce’s eyes!
So, yes! He would be shattered to pieces and broken. No one deserves to be treated like that, no one deserves the suffering that Albert went through. NO ONE. And that is why at the end of the monologue Bruce finally breaks down…
“Would you and Felix mind if I spent the night on your sofa? Just one night. I don’t want to go home.”
Even more upsetting, all characters in the play are based on REAL people, and what happened to them actually happened to real people so it is not from Kramer’s imagination, it would have made it more tolerable and less painful, but it did happen to humans just like you and me…
“Open your eyes, before it is too late” (Lee Pace as Mountain, Nature is Speaking)
