SOURCE: "Ibsen's Ghosts and the Ghosts of Ibsen," in To Blight with Plague: Studies in a Literary Theme, New York University Press, 1992, pp. 83-125.

In the following excerpt, Leavy explores thematic parallels between The Normal Heart and Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People.

An Enemy of the People belongs to the literature of civil disobedience, harking back at least as far as Sophocles's Antigone and carrying forward to, among other dramas, Bolt's portrayal of his "hero of selfhood," Thomas More [in A Man for All Seasons]. As in Ghosts, Ibsen continues to attack outmoded ideas, doctrines inherited from forefathers, the most dangerous among them, according to Stock-mann, being the idea that the ignorant masses "are the very essence of the people"—that they "are the people" and "have the same right to criticize and to approve, to govern and to counsel as the few intellectually distinguished people...