Tony Kushner's Angels in America Essay

He lets people push him around and tell him what to do. He does not stand up for himself against Roy, as we can see in Act 1 Scene 2, “Joe: If this is a bad time— Roy: Bad time? This is a good time! Baby doll, get… Joe: No, I---” (12) Joe backs down every time Roy interrupts him and he does not stand up for himself. Even after Roy interrupts him for the tenth time, Joe says nothing and lets Roy continue to ignore him. Joe and his marriage with Harper is not very strong either. Joe does not want to be in his relationship so he goes on long walks and does not tell Harper where he is going. This hints that he is unhappy with his life, as if he is going on these longs walks to think. “I think things are starting to change in the world.” (26) Joe says this at the start of the book predicting that things will change. Joe then decides that he is going to leave Harper because he think that he may be gay. Harper predicts something is different with Joe because

It is no secret that when Alison Bechdel was a child, homosexuality was not exactly met with open arms. Due to the unpleasant views many heterosexuals had in regards to homosexuality, Alison Bechdel was at first quite cautious when it came to being open about her newfound sexual orientation; however, she eventually opened herself up to her family, friends, and the world about who she is and did not let the political prejudices of others stop her. This is evident when Bechdel writes, “It was in that tremulous state that I determined to tell my parents. Keeping it from them had started to seem ludicrous anyway” (76). Here, Bechdel decides to come out to her parents, deciding that it was absurd not to tell them. Evidently, the prejudices of society could not keep Alison Bechdel down, and this resulted in her personality being shaped by the courage of being oneself, which is hardly an easy thing to

The play Angels in America, a play written by Tony Kushner is a narrative that focuses on two disturbed couples; a straight couple and a gay one. This narrative entails Harper who is the Joe’s wife. The gay couple comprises of Prior and Louis while the straight one comprises of Joe and Prior.

In the Battle of Gettysburg that took place on July 1, 1863, and ended on July 3, many casualties and injuries resulted from the fighting between those few days, leading to the victory of the Union Army. As mentioned in the Killer Angels, the hospitals were tents where soldiers were treated for their wounds on the battlefield, in the view of anyone and everyone. Amputations were almost every physician’s immediate response to bullet wounds shattering bones, amongst other types of injuries. Medicine was not as advanced back then as it is now, especially in the battlefield. Often, physicians and other medical professionals did not use proper hygienic techniques, which led to further complications due to bacteria and

Yoshino argues that because of these pressures to suppress aspects of our identity, the act of covering is “a hidden assault on our civil rights” (553), one that impedes people’s pursuit of personality authenticity. Many stories just like that of my gay friend are more than likely similar to other people’s experiences, people from numerous ethnicities, orientations or identities, and are most definitely in line with Yoshino’s perspective on the matter of covering.

I thought Louis would become upset at Boudreaux’s revelation but he did not. His talk of the Baroness sucking the life out of the living went right over my head… I was more interested in Boudreaux’s revelation that Louis had been sexually involved with this mysterious woman. Louis simply grinned and said, “Touché my

…to have and to hold, from this day forwards, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. These are the standard wedding vows and though, they are a married couple, these vows still play a role in any serious relationship. It is the promise of two people that they will be there, no matter what happens. However, things happen and, suddenly, that promise turns into a broken agreement. For instance, in the play Angels in America written by Tony Kushner, the character Louis leaves Prior because he has a terminal illness: AIDS. Therefore, their vow breaks the stable relationship. While the illness can break a vow, it can form one. In the musical movie version of Rent directed by Chris Columbus,

In Angels of America, Tony Kushner outlines the entire play with allegorical quotes from Harper. Specifically in act three, scene one, we see Harper appear in the scene where Joe and Louis are in bed together. During this confrontation, Harper says, “I see more than I want to see” (3.1). Looking at this scene from both a literal and figurative perspective, Harper claims to see things that she does not want to, leading her to understand it in a much higher manner. At this specific time in the play, Harper is talking about how she was looking at her husband and her husband’s lover in bed together. Just a few moments ago, Harper was telling Hannah how she was missing Joe and wanted him to come back. After seeing Joe with Louis in bed, Harper takes

Published in May of 1991, Tony Kushner’s gay fantasia on national themes, Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches, brought to light the brutality of the Reagan Administration as well as the devastating AIDS epidemic during the 1980’s. The play takes place in New York City during the years of 1985 and 1986 and follows two couples - Louis Ironson and Prior Walter, and Joe and Harper Pitt. While the main focus is on these two couples, there are various other characters that come up throughout the play that hold great significance as well, such as Roy Cohn, Belize, Hannah Pitt, Mr. Lies, and, mostly importantly, The Angel. With these characters, Kushner accurately portrays the struggles of the 80’s with homosesxuality, the realisation

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner can be conventionally defined as a work of Theatricalism. Breaking the preconceived notions of theatre such as gender casting, fluent scenes, and varying extremes ranging from characters, to visuals, to the introduction of historical figures. However, the work strikes a note of realism. We find ourselves encompassed by passionate actors sharing real emotions with us, scenes based in historical events, and characters placed in events that we then find to be our own realities. While we find our realities to be true—and heightened by those in the work—could it be possible that some of these characters’ realities are in fact false, or being defined by the theatricality that surrounds them? Harper serves as an emotionally charged wife to Joe, who questions not only his sexuality, but her purpose as a wife. A close read of the play begs

When it comes to reading literature, one often question why minor characters are even included, as I definitely wondered while reading Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. The play focuses on internal struggles following two couples in relationships while progressively heading toward destruction and surrounding the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. However, if taking a deeper dive, the play becomes so much more than that. Thanks to minor characters, the play is able to bring in politics, religion, power, sexuality, and justice all at once. Minor characters aren’t just fillers, they are there to help the author tell the story. In Tony Kushner’s one of the most celebrated plays in the 20th century, one of the minor characters that is often overlooked

Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” and Mwaganu wa Kaggia’s “Not Ashamed but so Ashamed” both explicitly address the social, religious, and political stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and homosexuality. The use of split scenes in “Angels in America” allows Kushner to demonstrate the similar ways in which both Joe and Prior respond to alienation despite having distinct personal conflicts. The two characters’ societal and personal dilemmas are most evidently intertwined in Act 2, Scene 9 of the play. In a similar manner, by using repetition of the phrases “I’m HIV positive” and “I am so ashamed”, Kaggia’s poem confronts the ironic notion that it is not the nature of illness that causes suffering; rather it is the persistent stigmatization of HIV/AIDS that continuously impedes any attempt to end this epidemic. The dramatic techniques shown in both texts are strategically used by the authors to emphasize the influences that social, religious, and political stigmatization have on individuals with HIV/AIDS and those openly disclosing their homosexuality.

He believes that homosexuals are men who “have zero clout” (46), and clout, or power, is one of the most important things in the world to Roy. Love, therefore, could be seen as a trap to him, because he is unable and unwilling to experience love. If he were to do so, his entire career could be destroyed. Again, Roy is speaking for himself, although Joe is struggling with accepting his identity as a homosexual, as well. Responsibility can also be viewed as a trap in the eyes of Roy because with high positions and lots of power comes a great deal of responsibility.

Joe has a battle with himself over the wrong that's inside; “no matter how wrong or ugly that thing is, so long as I fought, with everything I have to kill it... As long as my behavior is what I know it has to be” (Angels in America pg. 40). Kushner's choice of words for Joe seem to suggest that he is fighting the “wrong” inside him but only because thats what these religious ideals dictate he should do. Joe seems to be hiding the fact that he is a homosexual, we see this when his wife Harper asks him and he responds; “What if I... No. I'm not. I don't see what difference it makes” (Angels in America pg. 38). This is an example of how religious ideals bring difficulties not only in how a person lives but also their sexuality.

Documentary filmmaker and producer Tom Bywaters exposes behind the scenes footage of the original 1993 production of Angels in America. Thirteen/WNET produced the documentary in the same year. Major aspects of the research for the documentary are to investigate the historical perspective of the play and how the cast and crew created the original production. The main point conveyed throughout the work was that Kushner wrote Angels in America to convey his anger about how poorly he thought the gay rights community were treated particularly in the 1980’s. The brave Americans through history were the ones who physically and politically suffered with AIDS. Wolfe replaced the original director and demanded that each actor make a personal and emotional