Angels in America

Context

Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan on July sixteen, 1956. His parents, both classicalmusicians, moved a year later to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Kushner spent his childhoodthere. Growing up as a gay Jew in the Deep South, he has later said, made him more consciousof his distinctive identity as he might not have in heavily Jewish New York City. Kushnerreturned to the city for college, receiving a degree in medieval literature from ColumbiaUniversity. After graduating, he taught in Louisiana for three years, then returned to New Yorkfor good, studying for an M.F.A. at New York University and writing and producing plays. Hisearly works included an adaptation of Pierre Corneille's The Illusion in 1988 and A BrightRoom Called Day in 1990.

Nothing in Kushner's early career, however, predicted the overnight success he attained whenPart One of Angels in America, Millennium Approaches, opened in Los Angeles in 1992.Critical reaction to the play was immediately and overwhelmingly positive: the influential NewYork Times theater critic Frank Rich, for instance, called it "a searching and radical rethinking"of American political drama and "the most extravagant and moving demonstration imaginable"of the artistic response to AIDS. The play's Part Two, Perestroika, was greeted with similaradulation the following year. Kushner received bushels of awards for Angels in America, notleast of which were Tony Awards for Best Play in 1993 and 1994 and 1993's Pulitzer Prize forDrama. Outside liberal literary and theatrical circles, however, the play sometimes sparkedcontroversy. A 1996 production of Angels in Charlotte, North Carolina, for instance, took placeonly under protection of a court order after local officials threatened to prosecute actors forviolating indecent- exposure laws, and productions in other cities were picketed.

It is impossible to appreciate the play without understanding something about the history of theAIDS crisis as well as the broader story of gays and lesbians in America. Although men andwomen have engaged in homosexual behavior in all times and cultures, it was only in thetwentieth century that homosexuality came to be seen as a fundamental orientation rather thana specific act. In the United States, the modern gay rights movement began after World WarTwo, which brought millions of unmarried adults into close contact in large cities far fromtheir families. Gay bars and political organizations existed mostly in secret in the 1950s and`60s, but New York City's Stonewall riot in 1969 helped usher in a period of growing opennessamong gays and greater public acceptance.

Although gay life flourished in the 1970s, many gays saw the '80s as a period of retrenchmentand tragedy. The first cases of AIDS were diagnosed among gay men in 1981; within ten yearsmore than 100,000 people died of the disease in the U.S. alone. In the early years of theepidemic, ignorance and fear resulted in widespread discrimination against AIDS patients, andthe national media reported the story in a sensationalistic manner, if at all. Gays' anger aboutthe mainstream reaction to AIDS became interlinked with political frustration, as aconservative backlash that began in the late '70s hindered the cause of gay rights. For many gayactivists, Presidents Reagan and Bush symbolized the opposition: both men's administrationswere at best uneasy with and often hostile to the gay cause, and Reagan remained silent on the

subject of AIDS until 1987, when more than 20,000 people had died. Angels in America openedin Los Angeles in the same week that Bill Clinton, the first presidential candidate to openlyreach out to lesbian and gay voters, defeated George Bush; among gays the play inevitablybecame associated with a sense of euphoria and political optimism.

Kushner has continued to write playssuch as Slavs! (Thinking about the LongstandingProblems of Virtue and Happiness), Hydriotaphia or The Death of Doctor Browne, and mostrecently Homebody/Kabulthough none have attracted the praise accorded to Angels. Inaddition, he has authored a number of essays and op-ed pieces and has delivered addresses atuniversities and political demonstrations. Robert Vorlicky, a critic and friend, says Kushneroccupies "a kind of 'poet laureate' position for many of the disenfranchised an extraordinary,public intellectual." Although Angels so far remains the highlight of his career, it is a careerin drama, letters and political activismthat is far from over.

Plot Overview

Angels in America focuses on the stories of two troubled couples, one gay, one straight: "wordprocessor" Louis Ironson and his lover Prior Walter, and Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt and his wifeHarper. After the funeral of Louis's grandmother, Prior tells him that he has contracted AIDS,and Louis panics. He tries to care for Prior but soon realizes he cannot stand the strain and fear.Meanwhile, Joe is offered a job in the Justice Department by Roy Cohn, his right-wing, bigotedmentor and friend. But Harper, who is addicted to Valium and suffers anxiety andhallucinations, does not want to move to Washington.

The two couples' fates quickly become intertwined: Joe stumbles upon Louis crying in thebathroom of the courthouse where he works, and they strike up an unlikely friendship based inpart on Louis's suspicion that Joe is gay. Harper and Prior also meet, in a fantastical mutualdream sequence in which Prior, operating on the "threshold of revelation," reveals to Harperthat her husband is a closeted homosexual. Harper confronts Joe, who denies it but says he hasstruggled inwardly with the issue. Roy receives a different kind of surprise: At an appointmentwith his doctor Henry, he learns that he too has been diagnosed with AIDS. But Roy, whoconsiders gay men weak and ineffectual, thunders that he has nothing in common with themAIDS is a disease of homosexuals, whereas he has "liver cancer." Henry, disgusted, urges himto use his clout to obtain an experimental AIDS drug.

Prior's illness and Harper's terrors both grow worse. Louis strays from Prior's bedside to seekanonymous sex in Central Park at night. Fortunately, Prior has a more reliable caretaker inBelize, an ex-drag queen and dear friend. Prior confesses to Belize that he has been hearing awonderful and mysterious voice; Belize is skeptical, but once he leaves we hear the voice speakto Prior, telling him she is a messenger who will soon arrive for him. As the days pass, Louisand Joe grow closer and the sexual tinge in their banter grows more and more obvious. Finally,Joe drunkenly telephones his mother Hannah in Salt Lake City to tell her that he is ahomosexual, but Hannah tells him he is being ridiculous. Nonetheless, she makes plans to sellher house and come to New York to put things right. In a tense and climactic scene, Joe tellsHarper about his feelings, and she screams at him to leave, while simultaneously Louis tellsPrior he is moving out.

The disconsolate Prior is awakened one night by the ghosts of two ancestors who tell him theyhave come to prepare the way for the unseen messenger. Tormented by such supernaturalappearances and by his anguish over Louis, Prior becomes increasingly desperate. Joe, equallydistraught in his own way, tells Roy he cannot accept his offer; Roy explodes at him and callshim a "sissy." He then tells Joe about his greatest achievement, illegally intervening in theespionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg in the 1950s and guaranteeing her execution. Joe is shockedby Roy's lack of ethics. When Joe leaves, the ghost of Ethel herself appears, having come towitness Roy's last days on earth. In the climax of Part One, Joe follows Louis to the park, thenaccompanies him home for sex, while Prior's prophetic visions culminate in the appearance ofan imposing and beautiful Angel who crashes through the roof of his apartment and proclaims,"The Great Work begins."

In Part Two, Harper indulges in the fantasy that she is in Antarctica with her imaginary

companion Mr. Lies. But Antarctica turns out to be Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and she is pickedup by the police. With Joe nowhere to be found, Hannah comes to her rescue, tending to her inthe depths of depression. She finally insists that Harper join her at the Mormon Visitor'sCenter, where she has begun to volunteer. Meanwhile, the increasingly sick Roy checks in tothe hospital where Belize works as a nurse. Roy insults him with cutting, racist remarks, butBelize, angry but filled with involuntary respect, gives him valuable advice on his treatment.Their relationship is always bitter but heated and icy by turns. Belize, however, demonstrateshis considerable compassion for Prior, who tells him the full story of the Angel's visit. Afterher dramatic arrival, she gives Prior a prophetic book and explains that she seeks his help tohalt the migratory tendency of human beings, which the Angels in Heaven believe tempted Godto abandon them. God, she explains, left Heaven forever on the day of the San Franciscoearthquake in 1906, and since then his Angelswhose vast powers are fueled by constantsexual activityhave been rudderless and alone. To reverse the trend, the Angel says humansmust end their constant motion, their addiction to change. Not surprisingly, Prior is aghast ather words and vows to flee from her at all costs.

Roy learns that his political opponents plan to disbar him for an ethical lapse, but he vows toremain a lawyer until he dies. In a friendly rapprochement, he gives Joe his blessing, until Joereveals that he has left Harper for a manhe has been living for a blissful month with Louis.Stunned and angry, he demands that Joe end his gay relationship at once. Ethel comes toobserve him in his misery. Joe's wife, on the other hand, spends her days at the MormonVisitor's Center watching a diorama of the Mormon migration featuring a father dummy wholooks suspiciously like Joe. When Prior drops in to conduct research on angels, a fantasysequence ensues in which Louis and Joe appear in the diorama. The formerly silent Mormonmother comes to life and leaves with Harper, giving her painful but valuable advice on loss andchange.

Louis and Joe's idyll draws to an end when Louis says he wants to see Prior again. At theirmeeting, Prior coldly insists that he must present visible proof of his internal bruises. Belizelater tells Louis about Joe's relationship with Roy, whose politics and personal history Louisdespises. When Louis angrily confronts Joe, their fight turns physical and Joe punches him. Heapologizes, horrified, but they never speak again. Roy nears his end as well, reeling from Joe'sdisclosure and from Ethel's news that he has been disbarred. He dies, but not before trickingEthel into tenderly singing for him. After his death, Belize summons Louis to recite theKaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, to demonstrate thanks (for his stash of AIDS drugs)and forgiveness. Ethel leads Louis in the prayer, the play's emotional and moral climax.

After Prior suffers an episode at the visitor's center, Hannah takes him to the hospital. There,the Angel descends, and Prior wrestles her. He succeeds, and is granted entry into Heaven torefuse his prophecy. In Heaven, which resembles San Francisco after the great earthquake,Prior tells the Angels that despite all his suffering he wants them to bless him and give himmore life. The Angels sympathize but say they cannot halt the plague. He tells them should Godreturn, they should sue Him for abandonment. Back on earth, his fever broken, Prior tells Louishe loves him but that he cannot ever come back. Harper leaves Joe for the last time and sets offon an optimistic voyage to San Francisco to begin her own life.

In 1990, four years later, Louis, Prior, Belize and Hannah appear in a moving epilogue. Prior

says that the disease has killed many but that he intends to live on, and that the "Great Work"will continue.

Character List

Louis Ironson - A "word processor" who works at the federal appeals court in Brooklyn. Louisembodies all the stereotypes of the neurotic Jew: anxious, ambivalent and perpetually guilty.Yet that guilt does not prevent him from leaving his lover Prior when he contracts AIDS.Louis's moral journey, from callous abandonment to genuine repentance and sorrow, is one ofthe key maturations in the play; his awakening of responsibility parallels the awakening thatthe play seeks to awaken in its audiences. Louis's idealistic faith in American democracy, whileoften naive or self-absorbed, is similar to the faith Kushner himself manifests, so much so thatsome critics call Louis a stand-in for the playwright.

Read an in-depth analysis of Louis Ironson.

Prior Walter - The boyfriend Louis abandons after Prior reveals that he has AIDS. Priorbecomes a prophet when he is visited by an Angel of God, but he eventually rejects hisprophecy and demands a blessing of additional life. The Angel is drawn to Prior because of hisillness, which inscribes a kind of ending in his bloodstream, and because of his ancient Anglo-Saxon lineage, representing the notion of being rooted and stable. But he proves wiser than theAngels in rejecting their doctrine of stasis in favor of the painful necessity of movement andmigration. Prior is as genuinely decent and moral as Louis is flawed. His AIDS infectionrenders him weak and victimized, but he manages to transcend that mere victimhood, survivingand becoming the center of a new, utopian community at the play's end.

Read an in-depth analysis of Prior Walter.

Joe Pitt - A Mormon, Republican lawyer at the appeals court, Joe grapples with his latenthomosexuality, leaving his wife Harper for Louis and being left in turn by Louis. Louis is atfirst drawn to Joe's ideology but ultimately turns on him because he is a conservative and anintimate of the hated Roy Cohn. His initial naivet is challenged by Roy's unethical behaviorand his painful love affair. Joe's path in the play (from self-sufficient and strong to helpless anddependent) is in some ways the opposite of Prior's trajectory. The play finally seems toabandon Joe, excluding him from its vision of the good society because of his ideologyanomission that comes off as uncharacteristically narrow and intolerant.Harper Pitt - Joe's wife, a Valium-addicted agoraphobe trapped in a failing marriage whohallucinates and invents imaginary characters to escape her troubles. The perpetually fearfulHarper obsesses about knife-wielding men and the ozone layer as a subconscious stand-in forher own difficulties. But through an inexplicable dream encounter with Prior, she learns thather husband is gay and begins to take control of her own destiny. Of all the major characters,Harper ends the play the farthest from where she began: as an independent, confident womannewly in love with life and setting off to build her own life in San Francisco.Roy Cohn - A famous New York lawyer and powerbroker, Roy Cohn was a real-life figurewhom Kushner adapted for his play. Roy is the play's most vicious and disturbing character, acloseted homosexual who disavows other gays and cares only about amassing clout. His lack ofethics led him to illegally intervene in the espionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg, which resulted inher execution. Roy represents the opposite of community, the selfishness and loneliness all tooendemic to American life. However, his malevolence goes beyond mere isolation to actual

hatred and evil. He is forgiven (though not exonerated) in the play's moral climax, after hisdeath (from AIDS) unwittingly reconnects him to the gay community from which he alwaysdistanced himself.

Read an in-depth analysis of Roy Cohn.

Belize - A black ex-drag queen and registered nurse, Belize is Prior's best friend andquiteagainst Belize's willRoy's caretaker. He is the most ethical and reasonable character in theplay, generously looking out for Prior, grappling with Roy and rebutting Louis's blindly self-centered politics. At times Belize feels less like an individual than a symbol of marginalizedgroups, particularly since most of his history and personal life are hidden from the audience.But despite these omissions he remains complexfull of hatred for Roy, yet possessingsufficient character and morality to forgive him.Hannah Pitt - Joe's mother, who moves from Salt Lake City to New York after Joe confesseshe is gay in a late-night phone call. Hannah tends sternly to Harper but blossoms after sheencounters Prior, becoming his companion and friend. Her chilly demeanor is melted by Priorand by a remarkable sexual encounter with the Angel.The Angel of America - An imposing, terrifying, divine presence who descends from Heavento bestow prophecy on Prior. The Angel seeks a prophet to overturn the migratory impulse ofhuman beings, believing that their constant motion and change have driven God to abandoncreation. Her cosmology is disturbingly reactionary, even deadly, and Prior successfully resistsit in a visit to Heaven. This reactionary nature is rather surprisingly blended with a dramatic,Whitman-esque speaking style and an overpowering, multigendered sexuality.Ethel Rosenberg - A real-life Jewish woman who was executed for treason during theMcCarthy era. The Ethel of the play returns as a ghost to take satisfaction in the death of herpersecutor, Roy. Ethel hates Roy with a "needlesharp" passion, yet on his deathbed she mustersenough compassion to sing to him. Her recitation of the Kaddish with Louis indicates herforgiveness.Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz - An elderly rabbi who delivers the eulogy at the funeral of SarahIronson, Rabbi Chemelwitz describes the conservative process by which Jewish immigrantsresisted assimilation. Louis seeks spiritual guidance from him, and Prior later encounters himin Heaven on his way to confront the Angels.Mr. Lies - A travel agent who resembles a jazz musician, Mr. Lies is one of Harper'simaginary creations. She summons him whenever she wants to escape from her presentsurroundings, though Mr. Lies cautions her that there is a limit to her ability to flee fromreality.Henry - Roy's doctor, whom Roy threatens with destruction lest he refer to him as ahomosexual. Henry recognizes the folly of Roy's self-delusion but ultimately gives in to it,agreeing to set down his official condition as liver cancer.Emily - A nurse who attends to Prior in the hospital. Emily is one of several characters whogive voice to the same anti-migratory impulse as the Angel, she tells Prior in no uncertainterms to stay put.Martin Heller - A Justice Department official and political ally of Roy's. Martin isfundamentally spineless, allowing Roy to manipulate him in order to impress Joe and thentaking the abuse that Roy heaps on him along with a blackmail threat.Sister Ella Chapter - A real estate agent who handles the sale of Hannah's house in Salt Lake.

Like Emily, she urges her friend to settle down and remain at home.Prior I and Prior II - Prior's ancestors who are summoned from the dead to help prepare theway for the Angel's arrival. Prior I is a medieval farmer, Prior II a seventeenth- centuryLondoner who is more sophisticated and cosmopolitan in outlook. Both men died of the plague.Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov - The World's Oldest Living Bolshevik, whodelivers the tirade that marks the beginning of Perestroika. Prelapsarianov criticizes thepettiness of modern American life, the pointless quality of life in the absence of a governingtheory.The Mormon Mother - A dummy from the diorama at the Mormon Visitor's Center who issilenced while her husband and son speak. The Mormon mother comes to life, however, andaccompanies Harper while sharing painful truths about life and change.Sarah Ironson - Louis's grandmother, Sarah's funeral takes place in the first scene ofMillennium. Prior encounters her in Heaven, playing cards with Rabbi Chemelwitz.

Analysis of Major Characters

Louis Ironson

Of all the characters in Angels in America, Louis most resembles Tony Kushner: a young,progressive, Jewish New Yorker whose wordiness feels like an affectionate parody of theplaywright's own rambling prose style. While it is always problematic, albeit tempting, toequate author with character, we can at least infer from the similarity between Louis andKushner that Kushner does not intend Louis to be seen as a heartless villain, as some readershave proposed. It would be easy enough to reduce Louis to a caricaturethe idealist wholoudly discusses virtue but reneges on his own responsibilities. Louis's actions are clearlycondemned: his abandonment of Prior is weak, selfish and insensitive. But because thehardships of his situation are painted so vividly that the audience can understand Louis'sfailings and empathize with him. Caring for Prior is complicated and excruciating, and Louis'sguilt is genuine. He walks out on Prior with his eyes open, aware of the callousness of hisaction (despite a few petty attempts to justify himself) yet brave enough to do what he feels hemust.

Belize berates Louis for his "Big Ideas," but introducing Big Ideas into the play is one ofLouis's important roles. Louis's musings to Prior about the meting out of eternal justice formthe core of his eventual answer to Roy's and Joe's amoral veneration of pure law. In aconversation with Emily, Prior's nurse, Louis is the one to describe Prior's venerable heritage,which introduces the themes of history and stability. Most obviously, Louis voices most of theplay's ideas about politics (at least, the ideas that the playwright acceptsJoe is just aspolitical as Louis, but his ideas are ultimately discarded). Louis is the spokesman for a brand ofdemocratic optimism with which Belize finds fault but which Belize does not fully discredit. Ina play whose title promises a discussion of national themes, Louis is the character who mostconsistently examines the big picture.

Louis's journey from callous heartbreaker to sincere penitent is one of the strongest moraldevelopments in the play. For a long time, Louis wallows in self-pity and self-protection, butover time he learns to take responsibility for his actions. Prior accuses Louis of crying withoutendangering himself, a meaningless performance of emotion. But by the end of the play, thereseems to be no question that Louis's love for Prior is real and that Louis understands the trueimport of what he did. Prior's journey to the afterlife and back is mirrored by Louis's voyage toself-awareness.

Prior Walter

In classic terms, Prior is the character most easily identifiable as the play's protagonistironically and precisely because he is the play's chief victim. Prior begins the play at the mercyof everyone and everything around him: abandoned by Louis, infected with a disease that takescontrol of his body and its functions, and harassed by a merciless and unfathomable Angel. Asa homosexual, an effeminate man and a person with AIDS, he is also the victim of socialprejudice as epitomized by the self-hating but extremely powerful Roy.

Over the course of the play, however, the victim gains power and authority far beyond what weimagined he was capable of. The characters who seem the most confident: the strong, theopinionated, the straight-acting, those who wield influence and wealth in the worldthe Roys,Joes and Louisesare humbled and changed. At the same time, dispossessed and marginalpeoplewhether by identity, be it black, female or gay, by ideology, or by their own passivepersonalitiestake their places as moral arbiters and shapers of destiny. Put simply, the meekinherit this earth. In Prior's case, he turns the emotional tables on Louis, essentially from beinga "woman scorned" to having the wisdom and the willpower to reject Louis's entreaties. HisAIDS continues to plague him but not to dominate him, and he defiantly delivers the play'sfinal, stirring monologue. And most spectacularly, the prophet who wanted nothing more thanto run from his Angel ends up cowing the assembled ranks of Heaven with an impassioned bitof "theology," wresting from them that which he believes he deserves physically as well asintellectually.

In another, literally progressive trend, Prior embodies the rejection of conservatism and stasisand the embrace of a painful but necessary spirit of change. Prior's connection to stasis isrooted in his very being: in his ancient, respectable bloodlines and in "The End" inscribed in hisveins, whether in reference to his AIDS or to the homosexuality that will leave him childless.But by rejecting his Angel-imposed prophecy, Prior becomes the prophet of an alternatephilosophy that the play shares. His speech in Heaven is the clearest statement of the theme ofstasis versus change that predominates throughout the play, and the firmest rejection of stasisoffered throughout.

Roy Cohn

In an era of super-villains who match wits with equally cardboard superheroes, the Roy Cohn ofAngels in America stands out as a genuinely original and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal ofintentional malice. At the end of the play, the audience understands Roy deeply andcompassionately; perhaps they weep at his death, glimpsing the ferocious pain of his life andthe secrets bottled up within. But Roy is not excused by his pathos for a minute. Kushner'sdepiction of Cohn is so successful because his human side is never decorated withsentimentality or nostalgiaat several uncomfortable moments he represents raw evil. TheRoy who calls Belize a string of disgusting racial epithets, who delights in Ethel Rosenberg'sexecution and shamelessly bullies his protg Joe cannot ever be obscured by the tough,damaged survivor with the gloriously schmaltzy death.

Kushner employs a stereotypical image of the Jew in drawing Roy as a comment on anti-Semitism and prevailing images of Jewish people. Stripped of his telephone and his New Yorkmoxie, Roy almost resembles Shylock of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice the heartless,greedy middleman who cares only for money and self-promotion. With his back-channel accessand wheeler-dealer savvy, Roy also fits with more modern stereotypes of Jews as quietlyinfluential overlords. Kushner does not try to obscure this linkagehe revels in it. The firstscene in which Roy appears announces him as a grandly over-the-top villain for whom subtletyis less important than showmanship. By making Roy the cousin of these Jewish stereotypes, theplay ironically highlights his own ill- concealed anti-Semitism and homophobia. Roy assumeshe is persecuted for his Judaism in part because he does not like other Jews; part of what fuelshis hatred of Ethel is her Jewishness (likewise, his attraction to Joe is indivisible from Joe's

image as an all-American Gentile). But, the play suggests, what makes Roy a monster is not hisJudaism but his prejudice, ironically targeted at his own. The traces of Judaism orhomosexuality in Roy's persona (humorously hinted at in his first scene, for instance, by hisaffection for the musical La Cage Aux Folles) cannot be eradicated, and in death his link to hisancestral communities only grows stronger. But while he lives, Roy's isolation from his naturalidentity contributes to his twisted villainy and his unprofessed but profound loneliness.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes

Community

Discussing his play, Tony Kushner has said, "The question I am trying to ask is how broad is acommunity's embrace. How wide does it reach?" "Community" refers both to personal bondsbetween individuals and the political bonds we might call democratic citizenship. In simplifiedform, the plot of Angels in America focuses on the fact that both kinds of community aredestroyed and then recreated. In Millennium, relationships end, Roy stretches and contorts thelaw, the characters slide further into isolation and loneliness. All this wreckage is symbolizedby the physical destruction caused by the Angel's appearance at the end of Part One. ButPerestroika reconstitutes community in new and unlikely ways, forging bonds betweenseemingly unconnected characters (Hannah and Prior, Prior and Harper) and repudiating those,like Joe, who see law as unconnected to morality. Louis's optimism for democracy is naive butnot invaliddemocratic community is even able to withstand the crisis of AIDS. Even Roy, theplay's most difficult character, is not abandoned to the wilds of isolation: his death unwittinglylinks him to communities he had abandonedgays and lesbians, people with AIDS, Jewsandhe is reclaimed, albeit with difficulty, by those with whom he had tried to sever all connections.

Identity: ethnicity, race, homosexuality

The theme of identity is closely tied to the play's notion of community, since identity groupsare one of the types of connection around which communities form. Although we areaccustomed to thinking of white people as lacking an identity, in this play all the characters aremarked by ethnicity: WASP, Jewish, Mormon, as well as black; in addition, the male charactersare defined by their homosexuality. Even AIDS infection serves as an identity type, written intothe skin as visibly as race.

Identity can certainly have a divisive power: Louis's callousness about race and his suspicionthat Belize is anti-Semitic drive a wedge between them, while Prior's AIDS infection is toogreat a barrier for Louis to overcome. Nor is Kushner sentimental about the ability of identityto connect people automatically, since characters like Roy do their best to deny theirmembership in oppressed groups (though that denial is erased by his death). But one lesson ofAngels is that identity need not be discarded for communities to formthe melting pot neednot melt. Despite Prior's misgivings, for instance, Hannah accepts him as a gay man eventhough she is a Mormon. In the epilogue, the characters are not required to paper over theirdifferences. Quite the contrary: those differences serve as a kind of glue that welds themtogether. They are diverse yet mutually dependent.

Stasis versus change

From the first scene of the play, the opposition between stasis and change is Kushner's favoritetheme. In a world filled with despair, the desire to halt changeto preserve the past and ignoreor suppress the futureis a natural reaction. This anti-migratory impulse is voiced by RabbiChemelwitz, Emily the nurse and Sister Ella Chapter, and most spectacularly by the Angels,

who order Prior to make humanity stop its ceaseless motion. The Angel chooses Prior as herprophet because of the ancient, rooted history of his family and because (as Belize detects) hesecretly shares their reaction. But as events make abundantly clear, that desire is literallyreactionarydestructive, and at odds with the progressive values of the play. Migration, whichbrought Prior's family to America as well as Belize's slave ancestors and Louis's immigrantones, and which carried the Mormons across the continent to Utah, is an inevitable andinerasable human drive. More broadly speaking, Kushner implies that our democracy and ournational politics must resist this reactive impulse. Rather than seeking a haven in an idealized1950s past, America needs to embrace even those changes that frighten some peopleespecially the growth of a politically active and culturally accepted gay and lesbian minority.

Motifs

Biblical references

In addition to its overarching story about angels, God and Heaven, Angels in America is studdedwith specific references to the Bible. Louis asks Rabbi Chemelwitz what the Scriptures sayabout someone who abandons a loved one; Joe tells the story of Jacob wrestling the Angel;Louis compares a wound on his forehead to the Mark of Cain; Roy mentions the story of Isaacand Jacob and the Book of Isaiah. Partly, these references help establish a sacred atmosphereby linking modern America to the world of the Bible, they help convince us that prophecy isindeed feasible in secular times. The skeptical audience member is like Prior listening toHannah describe the appearance of an angel to Joseph Smith: disbelieving but graduallyconvincible. Moreover, the Biblical allusions foreshadow the real events of the play, so thatJoe's description of Jacob's encounter with the angel lays the groundwork for Prior'slikeJacob, he wrestles the Angel into submission and discovers a ladder leading to Heaven. Inanother instance, Roy tells Joe that unlike Isaac, he gives his blessing freelybut thecomparison proves more apt a moment later when Joe reveals he is living with a man, and Royfeels the pang of a father at what he perceives as the missteps of a wayward son.

Politics

In as opinionated a profession as writing, Tony Kushner stands out for the vehemence withwhich he voices his politics and the directness with which he incorporates them into his work.One early play, A Bright Room Called Day, stirred controversy with its direct comparisonsbetween the Ronald Reagan and the Nazi Party. Although it is always dangerous to equate awriter with the opinions expressed in his or her works, in the case of Angels the play's (if notKushner's) political platform is unmistakable. The most villainous characters are conservativeRepublicans, the heroes tolerant and left-wing; and throughout figures like Reagan, GeorgeBush and Newt Gingrich are subjected to continuous rhetorical assault, only incompletelyparried by Joewho is himself discredited near the play's end. The intention of these politicalinterjections does not seem to be the advocacy of a particular party or candidate, or evenbroader ideological persuasionmerely promoting Democrats over Republicans would be fartoo parochial an aim for a work of literature, and besides, it is safe to assume that most of theplay's audiences shared Kushner's point of view. The larger purpose is to exhort well-meaningliberals like Louis to shed their blinders and work more fervently for political change. Beyondexhortation, though, the politics of Angels remain inseparable from its morality, philosophy

and vision of community.

Religion, especially Mormonism and Judaism

In some ways, the two religions that recur again and again in Angels seem irreconcilablydifferentJews and Mormons, after all, are rarely linked in the popular imagination or indeedin real life. Jews tend to be leftist urbanites, while Mormons are concentrated in theconservative precincts of Utah; Judaism is one of the world's oldest religions whileMormonism is even younger than the United States. Louis's shock at encountering a Mormon inNew York and his unconcealed derision for the churchhe calls it a "cult"reflect thisapparent incongruity. But the play symbolically joins Mormons and Jews with one another andwith America itself. Both religions are separated from the wider society by their own inwardfocus as well as by prejudice and lack of understanding. That prejudice compelled both peoplesto make epic migrations, which Rabbi Chemelwitz calls the world's Great Voyages. And bothfaiths make moral demands on their adherents, legitimate and illegitimate. The religiouscommandment to loyalty overshadows both Louis and Joe after they leave their partners, andtheir beliefs add to their feelings of guilt. More problematically, the two religions traditionallyfrown on homosexuality, adding to the characters' lack of self-esteem.

The play values Mormonism and Judaism for their cultural connotations, the way in which theyare separate from the mainstream yet entirely and distinctively American. At their best, theyare both caring and valuable communities. But their particular religious doctrines are rarelyinvoked or examined, except as literary allusions. For all the visibility of religion, this is not aparticularly religious playthe secular faith of democracy and civic idealism is ultimatelywhat binds the characters together in the utopian epilogue.

Symbols

San Francisco

The city of San Francisco symbolizes both the failed society that the Angels try to perpetuate aswell as the promise of an ideal, gay-inflected community that the play's ending promises.Heaven resembles San Francisco after the huge earthquake of 1906, the day on which Godabandoned his people forever. His departure is as devastating to the Angels as the quake was tothe city. But while Heaven remains in a state of permanent rubble and decay, the real SanFrancisco was almost immediately rebuilt, becoming, as Prior tells Harper, a place of"unspeakable" beauty. The San Francisco metaphor thus contrasts the untenable stasis of theAngels with the ceaseless energy and determination of human beings. The city also representsthe longed-for ideal society the characters attempt to build in the epilogue. Westward migrationhas always represented hope in America, but earlier migrations like that of the Mormons onlyreplicated the emptiness and isolation they sought to leave behind. Now, in the last scene,Harper is migrating even farther west, as far west as she can go in America, to a place famousfor its tolerance, loveliness, and left-wing politics, a city that is not coincidentally America'sgay capital. The gathering on the rim of the Bethesda Fountain could have easily been staged inSan Francisco's Castro Districtboth locations represent voluntary community, inclusion,civic participation, and personal promise.

Millennium Approaches, Act One, Scenes 15

(Act One is subtitled "Bad News")

Summary

Scene 1

The play opens with Rabbi Isador Chemelwitz alone onstage with a small wooden coffin. He ispreaching the funeral of Sarah Ironson, the grandmother of a large, assimilated Jewish family.Rabbi Chemelwitz admits he did not know Sarah, whose later years in the Bronx Home forAged Hebrews were sad and quiet, but that he knows her type: the strong, uncomplainingpeasant women of Eastern Europe who immigrated to America to build authentic homes fortheir children. Her kind soon will no longer exist, he says.

Scene 1

Meanwhile, Joe Pitt is waiting in Roy Cohn's office while Roy nimbly manipulates severalblinking phone lines. Roy switches between arguing with a client whose court date he missed,arranging theater tickets for the wife of a visiting judge, and cursing out an underling. Joewatches him uncomfortably. As Roy uses swear words, Joe asks him not to take the Lord'sname in vain, explaining that he is a Mormon. Roy praises Joe's work as a judicial clerkhewrites decisions for his boss to signand then offers him a powerful job in the JusticeDepartment. Joe, pleased but surprised, says he needs to talk to his wife.

Scene 3

Joe's wife Harper is sitting alone in their apartment talking to herself and worryingsheimagines the ozone layer disappearing. Mr. Lies, a travel agent who Harper imagines, suddenlyappears. Harper asks for a guided tour of Antarctica to see the hole in the ozone layer. Sheconfesses her terrible fears about the world and the state of her marriage. Joe returns home andMr. Lies vanishes; he asks her if she would like to move to Washington.

Scene 4

The scene cuts to Louis Ironson, Sarah's grandson, and his lover Prior Walter. They are sittingon a bench outside the funeral home and Louis is about to leave for the cemetery. Heremembers his grandmother and apologizes to Prior for not introducing him, saying that familyevents make him feel closeted. Louis asks why Prior is in a bad mood, assuming it is becausetheir cat, Little Sheba, is missing. Instead, Prior rolls up his sleeve and reveals a Kaposi'ssarcoma lesion, an infectious disease that accompanies AIDS. Prior is glib but Louis panics,grabbing him; Prior admits he did not tell him earlier because he is afraid Louis will leave him.Louis says he needs to go to the cemetery but promises he will come back afterwards.

Scene 5

Joe asks Harper if she is willing to move to Washington, but she asks him to turn the job down,

offering a series of lame, unconvincing excuses and ridiculous fears. Joe asks her how manyValium pills she has taken today; after first denying it, she admits she has had three. At first hetries to calm her, promising that things are changing for good in the world, but then gets angryat her obstinacy and accuses her of having emotional problems. When they make up, Harpersuggests they try oral sex, but Joe is shocked and unnerved. Meanwhile, across the stage, Louisasks Rabbi Chemelwitz what the Bible says about someone who abandons a loved one in a timeof need, confessing that he is afraid of disease and death. The rabbi has no satisfying answer forhim.

Analysis

Although the beginning of Act One only gives brief glimpses of the play's central characters, itnevertheless reveals the conflicts that will confront them for the rest of the play. Louis andPrior experience a terrible shockPrior's revelation that he has AIDSand that awful momentsignals the inevitable destruction of their relationship. Prior tells Louis he is afraid he willleave him, but rather than comforting him or telling him he loves him, Louis just says "Oh,"then says he has to go. Only with prompting does Louis say he will come home. From thatqueasy beginning we can predict the downward arc of their relationship and Louis's agonizedquestions to the rabbi only confirm our suspicions. Similarly, the brief pause with which Joesays he was "justout" and that Harper has nothing to get anxious about indicates the oppositeshe has something significant indeed to make her anxious, the state of her marriage, as sheconfesses to Mr. Lies. These seemingly tiny moments and phrases are miniature versions oflarger, future patterns.

The beginning of the play also presages some of the most important recurring themes in Angelsin America. In particular, Rabbi Chemelwitz's opening monologue introduces an idea thatbecomes especially critical after the Angel's appearance in Perestroika: the opposition betweencontinuity and change. Sarah Ironson's journey to the New World is emblematic of the humantendency and the necessity to migrate, the necessity that so troubles the Angels in Part Two ofthe play. Her migration was literally motivated by survival, an escape from oppression, yet it issymbolic of every person's need to move. As the rabbi says, "In you that journey is""you"being both the audience members and the other characters in the play, including Louis andPrior, as yet unseen in the crowd at Sarah's funeral. Yet even within the context of Sarah'smigration an anti-migratory impulse is also present. The rabbi points out that Sarah Ironsonand her kind tried to recreate the Old World in the New, to stave off the disruptive influence ofa completely new society and, in particular, that of America, the world's most famouslychanging and changeable country. That this reactionary impulse is ultimately thwarted can bedetected in the very un-Jewish names of Sarah's descendants. But the desire to prevent changemoves Sarah and people like her to take on a heavy burden, one which she metaphoricallycarries "on her back" and which eventually distances her from the fully assimilatedgrandchildren on whose behalf she sacrifices.

The rabbi is wrong on one count, when he says that "such Great Voyagesdo not any moreexist." The entire play, of course, is the story of many Great Voyages: Louis's transgression andhis attempt to overcome it, Joe's emergence from the closet, Roy's journey to what Shakespearecalled "the undiscovered country," Harper's growing self-confidence and assurance,culminating in her night flight to San Francisco; and most importantly, Prior's voyage to

Heaven and back, his painful decision that he does indeed want more life. The play is a voyagein the political sense, too, documenting the struggle for full citizenship by gays and lesbiansand by people with AIDS. In real life, Kushner argues for a politics of solidarity, in whichdifferent people's fights against oppression overlap and reinforce one another. In that light, itwould be odd for him to endorse the idea that the immigrant experience is a unique GreatVoyage that cannot be repeated. In Kushner's universe, it is repeated constantly, by members ofdifferent groups who share the same dream of democratic inclusion.

Millennium Approaches, Act One, Scenes 69Summary

Scene 6

Joe stumbles upon Louis a week later crying in the bathroom in the courthouse where they bothwork. Joe asks him if he is all right and offers him a tissue. Louis complains bitterly about theother lawyers who saw him crying and fled the room, calling them heartless Reaganites. WhenJoe protests that he voted for Reagan, Louis mutters, "A Gay Republican." Joe awkwardlyreplies that he isn't gay, stammering and confused. Louis teases him, suddenly kisses him onthe cheek and leaves.

Scene 7

In a dream, Prior is doing drag and trying to cheer himself up with makeup, but his depressionover his health overwhelms him. Suddenly, Harper appears, bewildered that Prior has appearedin her hallucination; Prior replies that it is actually his dream. In the revelatory atmosphere ofthe hallucination, she immediately recognizes that Prior is very sick; Prior, in turn, tells herthat Joe is gay. Harper denies it, but then in an instant of bonding understands it is true. Sheleaves, shattered. As Prior smears the makeup off his face, a gray feather falls from above, anda mysterious voice calls to him to "prepare the way."

Scene 8

The two couples lie in bed that night. Harper, screaming, demands to know where Joe has beenand what is going on with him. He thinks she is talking about his job, but she is talking abouthimhe terrifies her, she says. They fight, and without warning she demands to know if he is"a homo." Joe says he is not, but adds that it makes no difference if he has inwardly struggledwith something he knows is wrong. Harper has no patience for his pieties and tells him she isgoing to have a baby. He cannot tell if she is lying, but she replies grimly that they both have asecret now. On the other side of the stage, Louis tells Prior about his vision of the afterlifeitis the weighing of a life that counts, not the verdict. But when Prior tells him about the progressof his disease, Louis becomes very upset. He asks Prior if he would hate him forever if hewalked out on him; Prior says yes.

Scene 9

Roy goes to visit his doctor Henry; when the scene begins Henry is describing the causes ofAIDS. Henry tells Roy that a lesion he has just removed from his body is most likely Kaposi'ssarcoma, and that he has other symptoms of AIDS as well. Noting that AIDS mostly affectshomosexuals and drug addicts, Roy tries to force the doctor to say out loud that he is gay,although he threatens to destroy his career if he does. Roy tells him that labels like "gay" and"AIDS" do not describe real things but simply a person's clout. Homosexuals, he says, are notmen who have sex with other men but men who have no power. He is a "heterosexualwhofucks around with guys," and he insists that his disease be described as liver cancer, not AIDS.Henry, disgusted, urges Roy to use his clout to request a supply of AZT, an experimental new

AIDS drug.

Analysis

Scene Seven is the first real indication that Angels in America has a supernatural element. Mr.Lies's appearance in Scene Three could be explained away as being a figment of Harper'simagination, but in this scene Prior and Harper exchange information that will bear directly onthe plot, information that Harper in particular could not have obtained in any "realistic" way.This scene is only the beginning: in the course of the play Kushner creates ghosts, angels andtalking mannequins, allows characters to be conjured "spectrally" by one another, and permitstravel between earth and other planes of existence, like Heaven. These devices are notgimmicks, howeverthe play could not function without them. This is obviously true of majorplot elements like Prior's visitation by the Angel or Roy's confrontation with Ethel. But thesupernatural also adds to the striking interconnectedness of the principal characters. Nearly allthe main characters share links that join them alone and are not routed through the others; butwhile most of the characters encounter each other in life, fantasy provides the most plausibleway for Prior and Harper or Louis and Harper to encounter each other.

This fantastical element places Angels in opposition to the long-dominant realist camp ofAmerican drama. One need only consider Hamlet or The Tempest to see that unreality, magic,and fantastical apparitions are important elements of Western drama. But many prominenttwentieth-century American playwrights have emphasized grittily realistic settings, hyper-accurate dialogue (including dialect and obscenities) and real-time events, often coupled with adepressingly pessimistic or cynical worldviewthink of Eugene O'Neill or David Mamet. Partof the hugely positive critical reaction to Kushner's play may have been sparked by the centralrole of fantasythe play's very title describes it as a "fantasia." The realist streak in Americandrama only enhances the playful liveliness of Kushner's vision.

Scene Nine presents a darker, all-too-real imageRoy Cohn's cynical view of politics andidentity. Here, at the outset of the play, Roy presents the polar opposite of Kushner's ownpolitics of solidarity. Roy not only feels no solidarity with other oppressed groups, like womenor racial minorities; he even rejects other gays and lesbians. Since his personal bonds withothers are based not on affection or shared ideology but on power, this is not surprising. Roymight desire another man, but desire is irrelevanthe only identifies with other powerfulpeople, like Nancy Reagan, rather than powerless gays. (A gay rights bill was introduced in theNew York city council in 1971, the first in the country, but gay activists could not get it passeduntil 1986, the year after the setting of Act One.) Roy believes his money and status protectshim from oppression, can even buy him immunity from AIDS in the form of AZT. But theevents of the play will demonstrate how wrong he is: the disbarment committee is so quick torule in Act Four of Perestroika because Roy is a "little faggot," and AIDS cannot be held at bayno matter how many drugs Roy takes. In real life, too, Kushner has noted that the newspapercoverage after Cohn died seemed to take a gleeful, homophobic pleasure in revealing his sexualorientation and his cause of death. Roy's politics of clout may have benefited him for decades,but they fail in his hour of greatest struggle.

Millennium Approaches, Act Two, Scenes 15

(Act Two is subtitled "In Vitro")

Summary

Scene 1

Prior lies on the floor of his bedroom, crying for Louis to wake up. Louis runs in, terrified;Prior is in terrible pain but refuses to go to the hospital. Louis runs out to call an ambulance,and while he is gone Prior has an accident that covers him in feces and blood. He faints, andLouis quietly despairs.

Scene 2

The same night, Joe comes home to find Harper sitting alone in the darkshe has been havingdrug-induced terrors. They talk about prayer, and he tells her that as a child he was fascinatedwith the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. Harper admits that she is not sure whether sheis going to have a baby, but adds that she thinks he should go to Washington without her. Whenhe protests, she says she is going to leave him.

Scene 3

In the hospital, Louis talks to one of Prior's nurses, Emily, while Prior sleeps peacefully. Shetries to console Louis, and to make conversation she asks Louis where the name Prior Waltercame from. Louis tells her that Prior is descended from an old WASP family that traces itslineage back to the Norman Conquest. He reflects bitterly on his weakness and lack of devotionin the face of Prior's illness, and tells Emily he has to go for a walk in the park to think.

Scene 4

Joe and Roy sit in a bar late at night. Joe tells Roy about Harper's addiction, her difficultchildhood and the strict standards of the Mormon Church. He says in spite of everything heloves Harper's troubled side best because of his own struggle to pass as a cheerful and uprightperson. Roy sympathizes but says that Joe belongs in Washington, with or without Harper. Hetells Joe that he is prepared to be a father to him, to push him to achieve, in a way that mightseem cold or unforgiving but which is really meant to toughen and protect him. Then Roydiscloses that he is dying of "cancer"; Joe is stunned. As Joe and Roy talk, Louis cruises a man(played by the same actor who plays Prior) in the Ramble, a deserted region of Central Parkwhere men meet in the night for sex. Louis asks the man to punish him, and they begin to havesex. When the condom breaks, Louis tells the man he doesn't care whether he infects him ornot, but the man grows uncomfortable and leaves.

Scene 5

Prior is visited in his hospital room by Belize, a black ex-drag queen who is his former loverand a dear friend. Prior wants Louis by his side, but he is nowhere to be found. When he calms

down, he tells Belize he has been hearing voices, but begs Belize not to tell the doctor since healso finds the voice sexually arousing and does not want to give it up. Belize tells Prior that nomatter what, he will be by his side. As soon as Belize leaves, Prior resumes an interruptedconversation with the voice; it tells him that it is not a herald of death but a messenger sent toprepare him to perform a great work.

Analysis

On first reading, Louis might seem like one of the play's villains, abandoning his lover at thetime of his greatest need. But although Louis has human failings and commits an immoral actin leaving Prior, he is no villain, as Act II, Scene One helps us to understand. The depiction ofPrior's illness is truly awful. The screams in the night are frightening, and Louis's panic isentirely justified: Prior refuses to go to the hospital, but there is no way Louis can help him. Hecannot even perform the simple task of cleaning his body, since Prior's blood is infectious. Inaddition to this physical and medical helplessness, the scene conveys the emotional difficultiesLouis must suffer. The gentle, witty Prior of years past is replaced by a person who screamsand cries, shouts at Louis for touching him and faints without warninghe is entirely self-centered, which is understandable but difficult for his lover. Faced with such a constantnightmare, Louis's actions become more comprehensible. Kushner has said that at a time whenan inadequate health care system and longer life expectancy are forcing more and moreAmericans to care for aging or sick relatives, he wanted to dramatize the simple truth that noteveryone is a born healer and caretaker. Louis's eventual abandonment of Prior is extreme andselfish but, as this scene shows, perfectly human.

Louis's problem is exacerbated by his tendency towards abstraction and his unreasonably highstandards for himself. In Scene Three, he tells Emily about La Reine Mathilde, who supposedlycreated the Bayeux Tapestry. Louis describes La Reine's unceasing devotion to William theConqueror and laments his own comparative lack of devotion. But as critic Allen J. Frantzenhas pointed out, this popular story about Mathilde and the tapestry is wrongit was actuallycreated in England decades after the conquest. Louis, then, is holding himself to a mythologicalstandard of loyalty, and he curses himself based on a positively unreal example. This is part ofa larger pattern of excessive guilt and harshness toward himself, which, paradoxically, preventshim from judging his own weaknesses accurately and trying to correct them. Because no onecould possibly live up to Mathilde's example, Louis initially justifies his moral failure. Later,in Perestroika, he will arrive at a more genuine remorse and an honest understanding of whathe has done.

Louis's conversation with Emily has another important function: it establishes Prior's ancientand very prestigious lineage. Whereas Louis's ancestors were rootless immigrants, Prior'sfamily is the epitome of stability, so much so that the sons all even bear the same name. What'smore, as Mayflower descendants they must be socially prominent and possibly wealthyespecially since, as the notes on the characters reveal, Prior lives off an inherited trust fund.But this unbroken line will come to an end in our Prior: as a gay man, he will have no children,and as a person with AIDS he likely has only a short future left. Since he rarely works, he willnot even add to the family's store of capital. The image of the tapestry provides a metaphor forthe family linePrior represents the breaking of the thread. No wonder he might be attracted tothe idea of halting the cruel march of history, since more than the other characters, with their

obscure or impoverished immigrant backgrounds, Prior has something to lose.

Millennium Approaches, Act Two, Scenes 610Summary

Scene 6

Joe and Roy are dining in a fancy restaurant with Martin Heller, a friend of Roy's who works inthe Justice Department. Martin is trying to sell Joe on the idea of coming to Washington,telling him about the conservative renaissance under Ronald Reagan. To show off to Joe, Royinsults Martin and then asks him to rub his back, in order to demonstrate his absolute loyalty.The two men pressure Joe to accept their job offer. When Joe continues to hesitate, Royswitches tactics, telling Joe that his political opponents are attempting to disbar him. But at theJustice Department, Joe could coerce Roy's enemies into easing up. Joe insists that he couldnever do something so unethical. Roy explodes, telling him that politics is "the game of beingalive." Bitterly, he vows to remain a lawyer until the day he dies.

Scene 7

On the steps of the courthouse where they work, Joe comes across Louis eating his lunch, andjoins him. True to form, Louis baits him about his unhealthy mealthree hot dogs and a swigof Pepto-Bismoland his conservatism. He turns philosophical, shuddering at the emptinessand isolation of modern America. Joe, in turn, describes his own private fears, his secret desirefor emptiness and freedom. He decides suddenly that he cannot face going to work. Louisinvites him to join him for the day instead. Louis's offer, and Joe's acceptance, is fraught withsexual ambiguity.

Scene 8

Late that night, from a pay phone in the park, Joe drunkenly telephones his mother, HannahPitt, at home in Salt Lake City. She is startled and immediately assumes that Joe is in trouble.Then she begins to get angry and insists that he hang up and go home. Without warning, he tellsher that he is a homosexual. She tells him he is being ridiculous; then, suddenly furious, sheyells that drinking is a sin and hangs up.

Scene 9

On opposite sides of the stage, Harper confronts Joe at home while Louis and Prior argue inPrior's hospital room. The two fights overlap rapidly and confusingly. Louis tells Prior he ismoving out, and Prior berates him, calling him a bastard and a criminal. Louis responds that heneeds privacy, that he refuses to be judged, that he is doing the best that he can. Shattered,pleading, Prior tries to reason with him, then screams at him to leave, which Louis does.Meanwhile, Joe tells Harper that he still loves her and that he will not abandon her, but thateven when they were first married he knew inside that he was different from other men. Shetells him to go to Washington, anywhere, but just to leave her alone. As they argue, they bothrealize that Joe is the same man who terrifies Harper in her hallucinations. Closing her ears,Harper calls Mr. Lies. He appears and they vanish together.

Scene 10

Hannah Pitt discusses her house with Sister Ella Chapter, a Salt Lake City real estate agentshe is selling it to move to New York. Ella begins to rhapsodize about the property, but Hannahbitingly cuts her short. Ella tells her she likes her because she is the only unfriendly Mormonshe knows, and urges her to stay put and not venture out into the sinful world. But Hannahreplies that Salt Lake has worn her out; she plans to take her chances in New York.

Analysis

Joe and Louis's encounter in Scene Seven plays on the multiple connotations of "free" and"freedom," which are important concepts for the play as a whole. After Louis riffs on theproblems of Ronald Reagan's children, Joe remarks on how uninhibited Louis is. He does notuse the word "free," but that is what Louis clearly isfree with language, free with innuendo, afree spirit compared to the stuffiness and repression Joe is accustomed to. But freedom is also apolitical concept, one of the cherished ideals of America. Louis makes the link explicit"Landof the free," he says, referring not just to political liberty but to his own "irresponsible" nature.This concept of freedom as liberation, both personal and political, is repeated when Joedescribes the empty Hall of Justice, and muses about what it would be like "if overnighteverything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free." Justice and loveare valuable ideals, but to Joe they are encumbranceshis commitment to justice keeps himfrom accepting Roy's offer, and his love for Harper traps him in an unhappy marriage. Freedomis frightening to him because it means abandoning his value system, but he still finds the ideaattractive, exciting and even erotic.

But Louis understands how costly that kind of freedom can be. Although it will not stop himfrom leaving Prior, his decision is truly agonizing, and he has a sense, still unformed but real,of the personal and social costs he will endure for his choice. Thus to Louis, freedom is as"heartless" as he himself is; it means the chance "to do whatever," to be "greedy and lovelessand blind." His use of the plural and his reference to Americans as Reagan's children links thisnegative vision of "free" to political freedom just as he earlier connected it with the positivevision.

Thus in this one scene the play offers a complicated understanding of freedom: it is thrilling,adventurous, vital, but also terrifying and lonely, and it has unimaginable costs. Despite thesecosts, though, both men will pursue their freedomas they must, for the rejection of freedomleads to stasis and death. Just as Louis's ancestors pursued personal freedom over a dangerousocean, or Joe's endured a harsh trek westward to find freedom of belief, so must theirdescendants continue to seek out freedomforward motiondespite the painful, even immoralchoices it requires.

Sister Ella Chapter, more than any of the other human characters, rejects this idea of freedom.For her, freedomas symbolized by travelleads inevitably to evil. She would prefer that herfriend Hannah remain in Salt Lake City, where she thinks she will be safe from danger. But theexperience of the Mormon characters shows that mere lack of movement cannot save people.Joe and Harper were just as unhappy in Utah as they are in New York; the only difference isthat, there, a conformist society prevented them from finding a better way, requiring them to

seem cheerful, uncomplicated, and strong. Salt Lake was not enough to give Hannah asatisfying marriage or make Joe's father love him. In Scene Four, Joe tells Roy that Mormonscome from dysfunctional families even though they are not supposed tostasis is no cure fordysfunction.

Millennium Approaches, Act Three, Scenes 14

(Act Three is subtitled "Not-Yet-Conscious, Forward Dawning")

Summary

Scene 1

A sleeping Prior is awakened by a man dressed as a 13th-century British squire. After the initialshock, the man tells him that his name is also Prior Walterhe is an ancestor, the fifth to carrythe name (the modern Prior corrects him, telling him that he is the thirty-fourth). The man,whom the play designates as Prior I, tells him that he, too, died in a plague even worse thanAIDS, the Black Death of the 1200s. Then a second ghost-ancestor appearsPrior II, anelegant Londoner, who died in the plague outbreak of the 1660s. The two ghosts tell Prior theyhave been sent to prepare the way for the unseen messenger. They chant a mysterious chorus inHebrew and English, similar to the voice's repeated refrain.

Scene 2

The scene opens with Louis and Belize debating politics in a coffee shop. Across the stage,Prior lies helpless in his hospital bed. Louis delivers a lengthy monologue on democracy,liberalism and race. It is hilariously wordy, ambivalent and contradictory: he grandly proclaimsthe success of democracy in America, then immediately spews out a host of exceptions andcounter-arguments; a moment later, he insists that the United States has no monolithic,dominant culture, until Belize acidly points out that the monolith of straight white men is "notunimpressive." Finally Belize cracks, and calls Louis on his passive- aggressive, borderline-racist liberalism. Hurt, Louis claims that Belize hates him because he is Jewish. Their comicalbickering continues, but the subject inevitably turns to Prior.

Across the stage, Prior lists the progress of his symptoms for Emily. In the middle of her reply,Prior begins hearing her words in Hebrew, but when he questions her about it, she does notknow what he is talking about. Then, in a blaze of light, a flaming book with a Hebrew aleph onits pages rises from the floor. Prior is terrified but Emily cannot see it. Prior flees. Meanwhile,a suddenly serious Louis begs for Belize's help and asks him to tell Prior he loves him. Belizetries to be sympathetic but tells him he cannot help him. As he leaves, snow begins to fall.

Scene 3

Mr. Lies takes Harper, dressed in a snowsuit, to a snowy wonderland she believes is Antarctica.She wants to stay in her fantasy forever, but Mr. Lies tells her it cannot last. He also points outthat she invented her pregnancy, but Harper replies that her entire fantasy is imaginary. Shefinds an "Eskimo" who she hopes will be her companion.

Scene 4

In the wasteland of the South Bronx, Hannah, newly arrived in New York, asks a homelesswoman for directions, but the woman is derangedshe talks nonsense and screams at no one.

Hannah grows angry and finally shouts at the woman to pull herself together. To Hannah'ssurprise, the woman manages to tell her the location of the Mormon Visitor's Center inManhattan, where she often goes for shelter.

Analysis

Louis and Belize's political argument is useful for understanding Louis's character and thecharacters' attitude towards identity politics and race. Louis is a stereotypical example of awhite, Jewish liberal, who is appalled by the conservative views of someone like Joenot tomention the Reagan administrationbut is flat-footed and insensitive when it comes to race.He holds a persistently optimistic view of America: he believes that power really has beendecentralized by radical democracy, that America is different from and better than any othernation and that racism can be overcome. Unfortunately, he readily admits a host of exceptionsto his sweeping statements, and he is incredibly naive, as Belize's dry interjections make clear.That naivet stems from his inability to consider others' points of view. Louis shouts, "Fuckassimilation," not realizing that as an already- assimilated white man he has little or nothing atstake in proclaiming a separatist agenda; he condemns liberal, "bourgeois tolerance" when it isexactly what he espouses, and he sees anti-Semitism everywhere, to the brink of paranoia,while appearing to minimize the lingering residue of racism. This speech is a comicalillustration of Louis's characterhis perpetual ambivalence, guilt and self-centeredness as wellas his optimism and generous tolerance.

It is also directed at the audience, the overwhelming majority of whom are probably well-offwhite liberals like Louis. Straight audience-goers congratulating themselves for their toleranceat going to see a "gay play" will find Belize's retorts striking close to home. The speech alsohelps to answer two possible objections that critics from the left might raise. First, there is theidea that Kushner's politics of solidarity tend to obscure the real differences between differentclasses of people. The play encourages people of all backgrounds to join together in commonstruggle, but might end up convincing wealthy whites (especially Jews like Louis) that they areas deeply oppressed as a working-class, black gay man like Belize. Belize reminds us that evenwithin the coalition of the left, some kinds of oppression, particularly economic and racialones, still cut very deeply. Secondly, Belize's anger helps defuse the criticism that the playfocuses too much on a middle-class, white gay perspective. Some critics have complained thatthe play's main black character is a stereotypical nurse with little background or personalhistory, who is not distinguished as an individual but only speaks as a representative for anoppressed class, who spends all his time attending to the problems of his white friends. But thisscene proves that Belize is unwilling to be consumed altogether by the white worldhe is nomotherly mammy figure. He is a proud, intelligent black man.

The scene also proposes an interesting parallel between race and AIDS infection. Belize retellsa novel called In Love with the Night Mysterious, about a white woman named Margaret andher slave lover Thaddeus in the years before the Civil War. Thaddeus does not acceptMargaret's idea that real love is not ambivalent, and we can imagine, as he likely does, that thecouple will not remain together once the war is over. As sincerely as Margaret may loveThaddeus, her pie-eyed romanticism is absurd, because the reassertion of racism after the warwill inevitably drive them apart. In this way, she resembles Louis, who loves Prior but whoselove is not powerful enough to overcome the tremendous divisive power of AIDS. Louis

understands the link, since his first question after Belize stops speaking is about Prior'scondition. As critic Framji Minwalla points out, the K.S. lesions on Prior's body makes AIDSan "unerasable biological stigma"he can no more pass as "normal" than Belize can. Just asrace separates Louis from the Jamaican man in Britain despite the unifying force of theircommon sexual orientation, AIDS keeps Louis and Prior apart, subjects Prior and Roy toprejudice and disenfranchisement even within the gay community. While solidarity may be anideal, it cannot be achieved solely by the power of an idealized gay brotherhood.

Millennium Approaches, Act Three, Scenes 57Summary

Scene 5

Joe tells Roy he cannot accept his offer. Roy tries to be calm, but he quickly blows up at Joe,violently telling him that nothing matters more than the call of Washington and power. Joetries to explain that his ethics forbid him to break the law, but Roy calls him a sissy. Then hetells him about his proudest achievementillegally intervening in the trial of Ethel Rosenberg,who was executed as a Soviet spy in 1953. Even though he was an attorney on the case, Roysecretly talked with the judge every day to ensure a verdict of death. Joe, reeling, assumesRoy's illness is talking. But Roy tells Joe he is tough on him because he loves him, and thentells him to leave. The two men nearly come to blows. As soon as Joe leaves, Roy doubles overin pain, which he has been hiding. He calls for a nurse, but looks up to see the ghost of EthelRosenberg herself watching him. Roy tells Ethel she does not frighten him, even when she sayshe is close to death. The nurse cannot hear Roy's cries, so Ethel calls an ambulance for him.

Scene 6

Prior I and Prior II have returned to Prior's bedroom to tell him that the messenger will arrivetonight. The ancestors chant and insist that Prior join them in a dance. He resists, frightenedand in pain, so they conjure Louis's spectral form to dance with him. As Louis and Prior dance,the ghosts say they have performed their duty and vanish. After a moment, Louis does also. Thesound of loudly beating wings fills the room.

Scene 7

The sound of wings continues, as Prior gibbers in terror, alone in his apartment. On the otherside of the stage, Joe approaches Louis on a bench in the park. Joe admits that he followed himfrom work. Tentative but earnest, he asks if he can touch Louis's face, muttering that he willprobably go to hell for what he is about to do. Louis asks Joe to come home with him, and whenJoe resists, he kisses him. After a moment's more hesitation, Joe leaves with him. Meanwhile,the sound of wings resumes in Prior's room. He is filled with fear but also with anunexplainable sexual desire. The sound reaches a crescendo, blazing light fills the room, and amagnificent Angel crashes through the ceiling. She greets Prior as "Prophet" and announces,"The Great Work begins."

Analysis

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's execution for treason came at the height of anti- Communisthysteria of the 1950s. Although anti-Communism had been building ever since the end ofWorld War Two, Sen. Joseph McCarthy touched off the biggest furor in 1950 by alleging thatCommunists had infiltrated the State Departmentcharges never substantiated with proof. Thesame year, the Rosenbergs, a working-class Jewish couple in New York who had been longtimepolitical radicals, were arrested for allegedly passing U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.They were convicted, and despite charges that the trial was biased and appeals for clemency

from the Pope and other prominent figures, both Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. RoyCohn's intervention in their case thus positions him at the center of McCarthyism, the mostvisible assault on civil liberties in America in the twentieth century.

Roy claims he hates Ethel because she is a traitor and a Communist, but his attitude towardsher is obviously informed by other factors. For one, his reference to "little Jewish mamas"underscores her Judaism, and emphasizes the fact that Roy feels no connection to her on thatground. As a Jew, she reminds him of his own traces of marginalization from the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which makes him loathe her more. For all his accomplishments, Royknows that the WASP elite sees Roy and Ethel as alike. What's more, Roy's crack about Ms.magazine is deeply sexist and anti-feminist. Roy never mentions Julius Rosenberghis hatredis reserved for Ethel in part because she is a woman, a woman who dares to enter the politicalarena. In fact, Ethel is the only female character in the play who does so, an especially strikingomission when contrasted to the vehement political involvement of Roy, Joe, Louis and Belize.

The most remarkable event in Millennium Approaches, from a theatergoer's perspective atleast, is the extraordinary image of the Angel crashing through Prior's ceiling in the final scene.It is the culmination of Part One in the sense that it is the moment of greatest chaos anddestructionthe emotional wreckage that the characters have been creating is made literal. Inhis Playwright's Notes, Kushner writes that the two parts of Angels are very different plays, thatPerestroika is essentially a comedy that "proceeds forward from the wreckage" of the Angel'sentrance. Part One describes the destruction of an essentially stable network of relationshipsand individuals, while Part Two works at rebuilding that network into a changed but ultimatelyrecreated whole. The end of Millennium, then, is like the most distant point in the orbit of acomet that will begin hurtling back to familiar regions in Perestroika. The Angel's entrance is afittingly magnificent image to mark this key transitional moment. Yet, even at the height of thedrama, Kushner refuses to be bowled over into sentimentality or maudlin excess. "Very StevenSpielberg," Prior whispers, humorously undercutting the grandeur of the moment and ensuringthat it remains tethered to the mundane, human world of daily life.

Perestroika, Act One

(Act One is subtitled "Spooj")

Summary

Scene 1

Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, the World's Oldest Living Bolshevik, addresses thecrowd from a podium. He poses a series of philosophical questions: Can people change? Andcan the world survive without an all- encompassing theory like the one that communismoffered? Marxism was grand and sweeping, Aleksii says, but modern America only lives forthrowaway things and pygmy ideals. At the end of the scene, Prior appears as he was at the endof Millennium Approaches, cowering on the floor before the Angel. He tells her to go away.

Scene 2

Louis shows Joe his new apartment on the Lower East Side. Louis begins to seduce Joe, but Joeholds back, uncomfortable, and moves to leave. But then he goes to hug Louis, who stops andadmires his smell. Smell is sexual, Louis says, and the two men inhale deeply, then kiss. Joefinally agrees to stay, and they embrace passionately.

Scene 3

As Mr. Lies sits playing the oboe in Harper's imaginary Antarctica, she enters in her snowsuit,dragging a fallen pine treeshe claims to have chewed it down with her teeth. Joe enters,wrapped in Louis's bed sheethe is the "Eskimo" whom Harper saw last time. He tells her he ishaving an adventure but that she cannot join him. He disappears, and Harper admits that she isnot in Antarctica but in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and that she took the tree from thearboretum nearby. A police car pulls up, lights flashing, and Harper surrenders.

Scene 4

Hannah answers the phone in Joe's apartment and learns that the police have picked up Harperwith a fallen tree in the park. She reprimands the officer for laughing. She insists that Harper isnot insane and promises to come pick her up.

Scene 5

Prior wakes up in his apartment, the Angel gone and the ceiling intact. He has had a wet dream.He calls the hospital to talk to Belize, who is working the night shift. Prior tells him about hissexy "dream" about the Angel and asks him to come overhe feels sad and scared yet filledwith a mysterious joy. In the hospital, Roy's doctor Henry tries to get Belize's attention, butBelize ignores him long enough to sing a hymn with Prior to cheer him up; Prior chooses "Harkthe Herald Angels." Henry gives Roy's chart to Belize and tells him to treat him carefully.Belize protests that if Roy has "liver cancer" he belongs in a different ward. When Henryleaves, he calls Prior back with the gossip: the closeted Roy has just checked in with AIDS.

Scene 6

Belize goes to attend to Roy, who looks very sick. Roy insults him and makes racist remarks,but Belize threatens to mishandle his IV and leave him in terrible pain. Roy quiets down, but heboasts that he is immune to pain, that he can make anyone do anything he wants. Belize turns toleave, but Roy begs him with sudden sincerity not to leave him alone. Roy, a brutal realist, asksBelize if he will die soon, and Belize tells him he probably will. With a great effort atcompassion, Belize advises him not to let the doctor perform radiation and not to let thehospital give him placebo drugs for testing purposes. Roy asks him why he is helping him eventhough Belize hates him. Belize replies he is doing it out of solidarity, implying that Roy is afellow homosexual. Roy scorns him, but he takes his advice and blackmails Martin Heller intoproviding a private stash of AZT.

Scene 7

Over a period of weeks, Hannah tries to tend to Harper, who refuses to dress or leave theapartment. Disregarding her complaints and her depression, she finally forces Harper to tidy upand come with her to the Mormon Visitor's Center, where Hannah has started volunteering.Meanwhile, Louis and Joe begin a torrid affair. After sex, they talk about themselves and aboutpolitics. Joe says he feels suspended from real life but strangely happy. Louis confesses that hedoes not believe in God. They playfully banter about politics, insulting each other's viewpoints,each finding the other's alien worldview a turn-on. In their tender moments, Joe tries to healsome of Louis's enormous guilt about Prior and finally tells a sleeping Louis he loves him. Butthen the two scenes come together, and Harper appears in Louis's room. She screams at Joe thathe is more tormented than he appears and that he cannot save Louis.

Analysis

Scene Six marks the first encounter between Belize and Roy, who, in some ways, arediametrical opposites but who, in other ways, are the most grounded characters in the play. Joe,Harper, Louis and Prior must all struggle with their personal value systems in one way oranotherthey face internal crises. But while they have difficult lives as a result of externalcircumstances, Belize and Roy are not in crisis. Roy's syndrome is painful, debilitating andultimately fatal, but it never prompts him to reevaluate his sense of morality or of ethics; evenon his deathbed he will still firmly advocate his concept of winners and losers, the value ofpower and clout. Belize does not even face an externally-derived challenge like Roywe knownext to nothing about his internal life. Here and there we get glimpses of his life beyond theboundaries of the play: we know he is an ex-drag queen, and later we learn he has a longtimelover in Harlem; but mostly Belize's personal world is unknown.

Despite his lack of personal description, Belize is the moral center of the play, the characterwho is the most continually ethical, reasonable and fair. Framji Minwalla points out that Belizeserves as an intermediary who at various times connects or brings together Roy and Prior, Priorand Louis, Louis and Roy, Prior and Joe. Unafraid to confront those in power, like Henry orRoy, he holds his ground in conflicts and brings humor and gentleness to friends like Priorwhen they are in need. He is the characters' sounding board and confidant, the person whocomes closest to articulating Kushner's ideal politicsnot the confused liberalism of Louis but

a generous and inclusive yet realistic progressivism. This progressivism highlights anotherbond between Belize and Royjust as they are the most stable characters, they also have themost sharply defined, clear-eyed political ideologies in the play. Joe and Louis argue aboutexalted concepts like law and history, and Louis tells Prior his glorious ideas about justice.Neither Belize nor Roy, however, is taken in by fancy words. They understand what power isand how it is wielded without illusions. Roy's vicious analysis of the "historical liberalcoalition" cuts to the heart of one of modern America's cherished ideals, the interracialcooperation of the civil rights movement, and yet Belize has the keenness not to respond withplatitudes about freedom and democracy. Belize is humane, Roy monstrous, but both arepragmatists.

This harsh honesty is the foundation of a grudging respect that Belize feels for his enemy, Roy.He advises Roy to ignore his expensive doctor and take his medical treatment into his ownhands. When Roy, suspicious, asks why he is helping him, Belize is equally puzzled. Butperhaps just as Roy learned to admire the tenacity of pubic lice, Roy's refusal to flinch in theface of pain and disease forces Belize to respect himnot to love him or condone his actions,but to respect him, at least grudgingly. Belize's respect and care for Roy is not based entirely onpolitics but also on the fact that AIDS humanizes Roy. In rare, fleeting momentswhen hepleads with Belize not to leave him alone in the darkthe human being can be glimpsedbeneath the ugliness and bravado.

Perestroika, Act Two

(Act Two is subtitled "The Epistle")

Summary

Scene 1

After the funeral of a drag queen friend, Prior bitterly denounces death and the marginalizing ofgay men. He is dressed strangely, in a black, prophet-like coat and hood. When Belizequestions his moodiness, Prior tells him that the Angel was not a dream: he has been given aprophecy in the form of a book.

Scene 2

Scene Two begins in a flashback, to the angelic visitation three weeks earlier. In piercing,monumental tones, the Angel announces herself as the Angel of America and proclaims thatPrior is a prophet. She directs Prior to remove the Sacred Prophetic Implements from theirhiding place, which was supposed to have been revealed in a dream. Prior, terrified, says he hasno idea what she means. She coughs, puzzled, and consults with an unseen figure, then tellsPrior he will find them under the kitchen tiles. He resists, until in a fierce outburst shecommands him to submit to the will of heaven. They go into the kitchen and return with aleather suitcase containing a pair of spectacles with rocks for lenses. Prior puts them on briefly,then rips them off, appalled at the vision. Then he removes a bright steel book from thesuitcase. Before he reads it, he asks why her presence always turns him on sexually. She repliesthat "Not Physics but Ecstatics" makes the engine of creation run. They are both increasinglyaroused. They have an intense sexual coupling and a ferocious climax.

Prior, in an aside, explains that angelic sexual couplings fuel creation, and that the Angels areincredibly powerful but have no ability to create. But by creating humans, God set in motionthe potential for randomness and change. The Angels were disturbed by humanity's migratoryinstinct, which manifested as tremors in Heaven, a city like San Francisco. Finally, on Aprileighteen, 1906, the day of the San Francisco earthquake, God abandoned Heaven, never toreturn. The Angels, believing that human beings' energy drove God away, insist that humankindmust stop moving and mingling. Prior, disturbed, tries to reject the prophecy, but the Angeltells him he has no way to hide. She takes the book and ascends into Heaven.

When Belize has heard the full story, he refuses to believe it is real, and accuses Prior ofimagining the Angel as a metaphor for wanting his disease to stop and Louis to come back.Prior admits that he might well be going crazy, but that he might also really be a prophet.

Analysis

Act Two is unique in Part Two for being comparatively briefonly two scenes, one a minorprelude to the other, and the scene's entirety less than half the length of other acts. In this act,of course, the appearance of the Angel is finally played out, an event that has begun twicebefore (at the end of Millennium Approaches and in the first scene of Perestroika). It is in

Scene Two that the Angel first speaks at length and in which her deluded cosmology is finallyrevealed.

The distinctive speaking style of the Angel deserves closer analysis. Kushner's characters adopta range of speech patterns, from the girl-talk and bantering of Belize and Prior to Joe's legaleseto the endless sentences of Louis's hyper- intellectual diatribes. But all the characters arecapable of taking on an unconsciously poetic sound when their thoughts transcend the everydaywhen Harper meditates on the end of the world, for instance, or when Belize detects in thesnowfall in Millennium the promise of "softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace." This poetryis taken to an even higher pitch in the Angel's speechesit is consciously poetic, grandioselypoetic, arranged on the page with the short lines and metrical structure of verse. (Thissometimes makes her speeches difficult to understand, particularly for audience-goers who donot have the benefit of referring to the printed pagethere would be no way to tell whether"Lumen Phosphor Fluor Candle" are the four "divine emanations" of her persona, as Kushnerexplains mysteriously in his notes on characters.) The Angel's poetry is at its grandest when sheis speaking officiallyproclaiming Prior's prophet-hood, relating the history of Heaven, and soon. But when she is confused or distracted, a more casual speech peeks throughwhen Priorsays he has never dreamed of the Sacred Prophetic Implements, the Angel stammers, "Nodreams, youAre you sure?" It is a glimpse of vulnerability behind her imposing facade.

The Angel's poetry is self-confident and impressive, andfitting for the Angel of Americaredolent of the greatest American poet, Walt Whitman. Sometimes the connection is direct:The Angel's warning to Prior that he cannot escape"Hiding from Me one place you will findme in another./ I I I I stop down the road, waiting for you"parallels Whitman's epic poem"Song of Myself," which concludes with the lines, "Missing me one place search another,/ Istop somewhere waiting for you." Earlier in "Song of Myself," Whitman writes, "I am the poetof the Body and I am the poet of the Soul," a duality which the Angel echoes in her post- coitalstatement to Prior and later to Hannah. Even when she is not reciting specific lines of Whitman,though, the Angel's words are clearly indebted to himsweeping and impressive, lavishlyerotic and sensual, specifically American, studded with the word "I." At the end of the play, infact, Kushner acknowledges his debt to his nineteenth-century predecessor,