1. Theme
2. Main Characters
Louis Ironson
Louis is a young, progressive, a heartless villain. Louis's actions are clearly condemned, his abandonment of Prior is weak, selfish and insensitive. But because the hardships of his situation are painted so vividly that we can understand Louis's failings and empathize with him. Caring for Prior is complicated and excruciating, and Louis's guilt is genuine. Aware of the callousness of his action for walk out from Prior, yet brave enough to do what he feels he must.
Prior Walter
In classic terms, Prior is the character most easily identifiable as the play's protagonist, ironically and precisely because he is the play's chief victim. Prior begins the play at the mercy of everyone and everything around him. He is abandoned by Louis, infected with a disease that takes control of his body and its functions, and harassed by a merciless and unfathomable Angel. As a homosexual, an effeminate man and a person with AIDS, he is also the victim of social prejudice. The characters who seem the most confident, the strong, the opinionated, the straight-acting, those who wield influence and wealth in the world are humbled and changed. In Prior's case, he turns the emotional tables on Louis, essentially from being a "woman scorned" to having the wisdom and the willpower to reject Louis's entreaties.
Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn of Angels in America stands out as a genuinely original and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of intentional malice. At the end of the play, we understand Roy deeply and compassionately, perhaps we weep at his death, glimpsing the ferocious pain of his life and the secrets bottled up within. But Roy is not excused by his pathos for a minute. While he lives, Roy's isolation from his natural identity contributes to his twisted villainy and his unprofessed but profound loneliness.
Louis Ironson
Louis is a young, progressive, a heartless villain. Louis's actions are clearly condemned, his abandonment of Prior is weak, selfish and insensitive. But because the hardships of his situation are painted so vividly that we can understand Louis's failings and empathize with him. Caring for Prior is complicated and excruciating, and Louis's guilt is genuine. Aware of the callousness of his action for walk out from Prior, yet brave enough to do what he feels he must.
Prior Walter
In classic terms, Prior is the character most easily identifiable as the play's protagonist, ironically and precisely because he is the play's chief victim. Prior begins the play at the mercy of everyone and everything around him. He is abandoned by Louis, infected with a disease that takes control of his body and its functions, and harassed by a merciless and unfathomable Angel. As a homosexual, an effeminate man and a person with AIDS, he is also the victim of social prejudice. The characters who seem the most confident, the strong, the opinionated, the straight-acting, those who wield influence and wealth in the world are humbled and changed. In Prior's case, he turns the emotional tables on Louis, essentially from being a "woman scorned" to having the wisdom and the willpower to reject Louis's entreaties.
Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn of Angels in America stands out as a genuinely original and surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of intentional malice. At the end of the play, we understand Roy deeply and compassionately, perhaps we weep at his death, glimpsing the ferocious pain of his life and the secrets bottled up within. But Roy is not excused by his pathos for a minute. While he lives, Roy's isolation from his natural identity contributes to his twisted villainy and his unprofessed but profound loneliness.
3. Summary of the Story (plot)
Angels in America focuses on the stories of two troubled couples, one gay and one straight. They are Louis Ironson and his lover Prior Walter, and Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt and his wife Harper. 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 that he cannot stand the strain and fear. Meanwhile, Joe is offered a job in the Justice Department by Roy Cohn, bigoted mentor and friend. But Harper, who is addicted to Valium and suffers anxiety and hallucinations, does not want to move to Washington.
The two couples’s fates quickly become intertwined. Joe stumbles upon Louis crying in the bathroom of the courthouse where he works, and they strike up an unlikely friendship based in part on Louis's suspicion that Joe is gay. Harper and Prior also meet, in a fantastical mutual dream sequence in which Prior reveals to Harper that her husband is a closeted homosexual. Harper confronts Joe, who denies it but says he has struggled inwardly with the issue.
Roy receives a different kind of surprise. At an appointment with his doctor Henry, he learns that he too has been diagnosed with AIDS. But Roy, who considers gay men weak and ineffectual, thunders that he has nothing in common with them, whereas he has "liver cancer."
Prior's illness and Harper's terrors both grow worse. Louis strays from Prior's bedside to seek anonymous sex in Central Park at night. Fortunately, Prior has a more reliable caretaker in Belize, an ex-drag queen and dear friend. Prior confesses to Belize that he has been hearing a wonderful and mysterious voice. Belize is skeptical, but once he leaves there is the voice speak to Prior, telling him she is a messenger who will soon arrive for him.
As the days pass, Louis and 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 a homosexual, but Hannah tells him he is being ridiculous. Nonetheless, she makes plans to sell her house and come to New York to put things right. In a tense scene, Joe tells Harper about his feelings, and she screams at him to leave, while simultaneously Louis tells Prior he is moving out.
The disconsolate Prior is awakened one night by the ghosts of two ancestors who tell him they have come to prepare the way for the unseen messenger. Tormented by such supernatural appearances and by his anguish over Louis, Prior becomes increasingly desperate. Meanwhile, Joe tells Roy he cannot accept his offer. Roy explodes at him but then he tells Joe about his greatest achievement, illegally intervening in the espionage trial of Ethel Rosenberg in the 1950s and guaranteeing her execution. Joe is shocked and leaves. When Joe leaves, the ghost of Ethel herself appears, having come to witness Roy's last days on earth.
In the climax of Part One, Joe follows Louis to the park then accompanies him home for sex, while Prior's prophetic visions culminate in the appearance of an 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 picked up by the police. With Joe nowhere to be found, Hannah comes to her rescue, tending to her in the depths of depression. She finally insists that Harper join her at the Mormon Visitor's Center, where she has begun to volunteer. Meanwhile, the increasingly sick Roy checks in to the hospital where Belize works as a nurse. Roy insults him with cutting, racist remarks, but Belize angry but filled with involuntary respect, gives him valuable advice on his treatment.
Roy learns that his political opponents plan to disbar him for an ethical lapse, but he vows to remain a lawyer until he dies. In a friendly rapprochement, he gives Joe his blessing, until Joe reveals that he has left Harper for a man. He has been living for a blissful month with Louis. Stunned and angry, he demands that Joe end his gay relationship at once. Ethel comes to observe him in his misery.
Joe's wife, on the other hand, spends her days at the Mormon Visitor's Center watching a diorama of the Mormon migration featuring a father dummy that looks suspiciously like Joe. When Prior drops in to conduct research on angels, a fantasy sequence ensues in which Louis and Joe appear in the diorama. The formerly silent Mormon mother comes to life and leaves with Harper, giving her painful but valuable advice on loss and change.
Louis and Joe's draws to an end when Louis says he wants to see Prior again. At their meeting, Prior coldly insists that he must present visible proof of his internal bruises. Belize later tells Louis about Joe's relationship with Roy, whose politics and personal history Louis despises. When Louis angrily confronts Joe, their fight turns physical and Joe punches him. He apologizes, horrified, but they never speak again. Roy nears his end as well, reeling from Joe's disclosure and from Ethel's news that he has been disbarred. He dies, but not before tricking Ethel into tenderly singing for him.
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 to refuse 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 him more life. The Angels sympathize but say they cannot halt the plague. He tells them should God return, they should sue Him for abandonment. Back on earth, his fever broken, Prior tells Louis he loves him but that he cannot ever come back. Harper leaves Joe for the last time and sets off on 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.
4. Setting and atmosphere
Setting
The majority of Angels in America is set in New York City in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan's presidency. We zip around from the characters' apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to fancy Manhattan restaurants, to hospitals, a cemetery, Central Park, the offices of the Brooklyn Federal Court of Appeals, and even an abandoned lot in the Bronx. The wide variety of urban locations that Angels takes us to lends to the epic feeling of the play. If the whole thing were bottled up in one character's apartment, it just wouldn't have quite the same scope. For one scene at least, we visit Salt Lake City, Mormon capital of the world, where we watch Joe's mother Hannah prepare to sell her house and move to New York.
Atmosphere
I think this play have a gloomy and tense atmosphere, because the play is show how people must change their perception after they face the problem. Its gloomy because there are some death scene and struggle.
Setting
The majority of Angels in America is set in New York City in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan's presidency. We zip around from the characters' apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to fancy Manhattan restaurants, to hospitals, a cemetery, Central Park, the offices of the Brooklyn Federal Court of Appeals, and even an abandoned lot in the Bronx. The wide variety of urban locations that Angels takes us to lends to the epic feeling of the play. If the whole thing were bottled up in one character's apartment, it just wouldn't have quite the same scope. For one scene at least, we visit Salt Lake City, Mormon capital of the world, where we watch Joe's mother Hannah prepare to sell her house and move to New York.
Atmosphere
I think this play have a gloomy and tense atmosphere, because the play is show how people must change their perception after they face the problem. Its gloomy because there are some death scene and struggle.
5. Symbol/ Allegory
Angel
The play is filled with references to angels, and these divine figures are used to represent many different things. One of the early mentions of angels comes from Harper, who describes the ozone layer as guardian angels, hands linked, shell of safety for life itself. The next reference to angels comes in the following scene, but it has a totally different connotation. When Prior reveals that he has a lesion, a sign of AIDS, he calls the sore on his arm "the wine-dark kiss of the angel of death". Harper references angels as beings who protect life, while Prior references angels as taking life away.
Angel
The play is filled with references to angels, and these divine figures are used to represent many different things. One of the early mentions of angels comes from Harper, who describes the ozone layer as guardian angels, hands linked, shell of safety for life itself. The next reference to angels comes in the following scene, but it has a totally different connotation. When Prior reveals that he has a lesion, a sign of AIDS, he calls the sore on his arm "the wine-dark kiss of the angel of death". Harper references angels as beings who protect life, while Prior references angels as taking life away.
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