Celebration of Homosexuality in Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener

Abstract

Armistead Maupin in this novel The Night Listener shows the free acceptance and celebration of homosexual life through the protagonist Gabriel Noone.Gabriel Noone stands with the whole humanity without prefering ghetto life of gay groups. He proudly announces his sexuality as a gay writer and lives his life honorably with Jess and among the so called heterosexual majority. He treats Pete, an abused teenager so warmly that Pete regains his lost belief upon people and their relationship.Gabriel, through his behavior and humanly activities,questions the false myths about homosexuality and naturalizes it as one of the natural possibility of human sexuality. Through his extraordinary celebration of the so called unnatural, diseased, and marginalized homosexuality, Gabriel Noone subverts ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. One of the most important aspects of this novel is that Gabriel is not aggressive at all about the existence of heterosexuals rather he works with heterosexuals comfortably as for him his sexuality is just his private issue which does not dissect him from the rest of the human society