[rent-head1111]

Okay I've seen Rent a bunch of times but one thing has always confused me. Everyone always says that April commited suicide- how do they know this? In the play it just says she slit her wrists in the bathroom, since when does sliting your wrists= suicide? Correct me if I'm wrong but maybe she was just depressed knowing she had HIV.

[The Very Angry Woman]

I really don't think April pulled a Norma Desmond.

[teapot]

As a normal course of cause and effect, unless the person acts quickly to interrupt the loss of blood, slitting your wrists does indeed equal suicide. Why on earth would you torture the implied narrative to add some extraneous explanations? There is nothing to indicate such an alternative interpretation in the book of the musical.

[The Very Angry Woman]

Besides, the first time April is brought up, it's the wrist-slitting. The second, Roger explicitly says she's dead.

Sometimes a fern...

[rent-head1111]

Thanks for the help.
I will now yell at everyone who says April commited suicide.

[The Very Angry Woman]

[wtfchuck]

[sylvesterm11]

...

When April found out that she and Roger had contracted HIV from their drug use, she felt guilty and slit her wrists. She bled out. She died. The end.

[Quique]

The lyric "...his girlfriend April left a note saying 'we've got AIDS...'" has always bugged me because nobody catches AIDS. However, people do catch HIV, which then causes AIDS. The whole purpose of AZT is to help slow the progression of HIV to AIDS, which is defined as a CD4 count of less than 200.

[Vichysois]

^ One could argue that April didn't know the difference between the two. We might surmise that, being a bohemian-groupie type, she wasn't educated all that much. That's unfair, but not inconceivable.

[Ulkis]

Also, SHE probably had AIDS and assumed Roger did too.

[alcockell]

[Vichysois]

Well, the film was set in 1989, but the musical isn't. Yes, the gentrification issues then seem anachronistic. But the musical is more generally mid-nineties.