Okay, Okay, Brandon and Philip are Gay- What About the Rest of Them?

          Well, if it is assumed that Brandon and Philip are homosexuals and there is  homosexual meaning in many of their interactions, then homosexual meaning can also be found in their interactions with other characters, primarily Rupert Cadell (Miller 120). Rupert looked after both boys during their years at an elite all male boarding school. Brandon especially admired Rupert. It was the housemaster, in fact, that instilled in Brandon the perturbing notion that superior beings have the discretion to decide who is inferior and the privilege of killing those they deem inferior.

            During the movie, Rupert does nothing to prove his heterosexuality. We don’t know if he’s married, he doesn’t bring a female date to the party, and he does not seem interested in the advances of housekeeper Mrs. Wilson who hints at hoping to win him over early in the film. He is kind to her, but addresses her just as he would any other guest. His only attempt to prove his is not homosexual is to disassociate himself with Brandon and Philip at the end of the film. Perhaps it is natural for a former teacher to disassociate himself with his psychopathic former-student, but if the murder is a metaphor for gay sex, than it can be said that Rupert’s rejection of the beliefs that motivated Brandon to commit the act can also be Rupert’s method of rejecting homosexuality.

            When Rupert confirms his suspicion that Philip and Brandon have murdered David by seeing the body in the chest for himself, he is absolutely horrified. Brandon argues that it was Rupert who stated that “moral concepts of right and wrong don’t hold for the intellectually superior.” This is true, Rupert did previously express this opinion. He refutes it, however, by saying that Brandon had given his words a new, evil meaning. He’s twisted them to make an excuse for the murder. There was something deep inside Brandon that caused him to follow through with the murder that, supposedly, never existed inside of Rupert. If these notions never existed inside of Rupert, why would he preach them to impressionable boarding school boys? The former house-master seems to be in denial. Rupert also stated that David “lived and loved” as Brandon never could. This could imply that David lived as a straight man and loved as a straight man, and Brandon could never relate to him because he’s a homosexual. Rupert fixates on Brandon’s homosexuality in order to establish that he is heterosexual (Miller 122). We don’t know that he prefers women to men, but we know that “something inside of him” has caused him to reject Brandon and Philip’s lifestyle. He is heterosexual only because he isn’t homosexual, and he must expose his former students (as homosexuals) at the end of the film by alerting the police (the rest of society) of their crime (their homosexuality) in order to wholly substantiate this.