Selfishness and Greed
...imothy’s Church?…Right. Exactly…Mort—LAY OFF!’” (590) When the bishop thanks him profusely, the Mayor puts up a false front, saying “There’s no need to regard it as a favor or even as a service. The facts you so ably presented to me were very persuasive, and I think the entire city is going to benefit. I’m happy to do something for yoooou that’s good for yoooou and for the city of New York.” (591) He gives the impression that what he had done was purely out of good will and for the benefit of the city, but this is clearly not so. The Mayor agrees to help the bishop only for something in return that would benefit him, but when the bishop turns down the offer and the Mayor doesn’t get his wish, he doesn’t even think twice about keeping his word: “ ‘Mort? You know that church, St. Timothy’s?…Right…LANDMARK THE SON OF A BITCH!’” (593) The Mayor complied with the bishop’s wish solely out of selfishness and when he didn’t benefit from the situation he had no motivation to keep his word because he lacks a sense of integrity and good will. Larry Kramer, like most of the characters in this novel, is driven by selfishness and greed. An instance when we can clearly see these two traits manifest themselves in Kramer is during the meeting in Abe Weiss’ office concerning Roland Auburn and the McCoy case. “Fitzgibbon said nothing. He just smiled. And now Kramer knew what the smile was all about. Bernie thought he was trying to light up his witness. Kramer knew all about that—but this was different!” (428) Kramer claims that his witness, Roland Auburn, is different, that he is special and that it isn’t the usual ‘lighting up of the witness’ phenomenon that often occur in prosecutors. But examining the situation and his character a little deeper, we can detect the underlying selfishness and greed. Kramer is angling his own rise to power by doing Weiss’ bidding. Persecuting McCoy will open the gate to his rise to power and this Roland Auburn is the key. Kramer is not ‘lighting up’ Auburn “to believe that what you were doing with this person—namely, using him to pack another person off to jail—was not only effective but right,” (428); Kramer is not lighting up his witness to achieve justice for the people the Bronx, but merely to achieve power himself. Abe Weiss may be one of the characters most driven by selfishness and greed in this novel. His one and only purpose is to achieve widespread attention in the newspapers and on television for the purpose of reelection. The furthering of his image and his interests motivates everything he does, and he takes advantage of every situation he can get his hands on; this time, it happens to be the McCoy case. As Bacon says of Weiss, “…he’s like the bat. You know the fable of the bat? The birds and the beasts were having a war. As long as the birds were winning, the bat says he’s a bird, because he can fly. When the beasts were winning, the bat says h...