In the dense web of interconnectedness

Ideas
on the first part of the play, named
Angels in America
Written by Tony Kushner

Sipos Kincső Gyopár

LMA III.
University of „Petru Maior”

19. 01. 2011

 We live in a world, where everything and everybody is connected to each other in a
way more or less visible. One can rarely act without affecting others in the surroundings and
even changing and reshaping the formation and evolution or in some cases the involution of
an identity, thus shaping also the face of a community that forms around these groups of
identity. The connections of these communities have a key role in today’s multicultural
environment and society. The individuals of these societies are struggling with the opposition
between theirs thirst for integration and the desire of differentiate oneself from the
mainstream. Only by truly accepting oneself and others too can one find his or her place in the
world and realizing the fact that people are diverse but mutually dependent leads to the
recognition of diversity in unity.
These all are beautifully and smartly depicted in Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in
America, exploring various themes, like homosexuality, racism, religion, AIDS and the
connection between them.
The action is placed in the 80’s of America, in the constantly growing multicultural
city of New York. It’s the time of Reagan’s presidency, a highly conservative and close-
minded one. The characters are struggling with the difficulty of being homosexual both
openly and in private and also with the discrimination that follows the spreading of a new
epidemic, called AIDS. The play gives a fascinating insight of these effects on individuals and
communities.
There are two important couple in the play, one gay (Prior and Louis) and another
seemingly straight (Harper and Joe). None of these relationships is working well, mainly
because of the inability of acceptance and the fear of change. Louis can not deal with his sick
boyfriend, the disease and the thought of death seems to be too great barrier for him to
overcome. Whereas Prior has the spirit of change and embodies the rejection of conservatism
and the stasis. He is in big pain, but still he decides to fight against his illness. In the case of
Joe and Harper, the husband is hiding his true identity and denies his attraction to his gender,
causing the unhappiness and incertitude of his wife, who slowly becomes valium addicted and
tries to escape from reality through her delusional fantasies. All the characters are marked by
ethnicity and religion and they meant to show how difficult is to live in America when you are
different: black, Jewish, Mormon, AIDS infected, homosexual. These distinctions make
people to connect among each others automatically, but the play has an exception in the
character of Roy Cohn an influential attorney, who is based on a real person. He is also gay,
but he denies his membership in oppressed groups and he feels no solidarity with them. His
relationships with others are based on power and not on affection or shared ideology. In Roy's
deluded world, values like love, honor and trust are irrelevant, and all human relationships can
be tallied up by favors granted or seconds needed to return a phone call. He can only identify
his self with other powerful people and not with powerless gays who can not get a pissant
antidiscrimination bill through City Council. He truly believes that his status and his “clouts”
protects him from oppression and can even buy him immunity from AIDS.
Another very important part of the play is the speech of the rabbi, held at the funeral of
a Jewish woman, Sarah Ironson, whose grandson turn to be Louis. This speech in the
beginning of the play is related to the problem of assimilation of the Jewish woman’s children
and the struggle of the woman’s ancestors to make it to America. The words of the rabbi are
rather cynical “such Great Voyages in this world do not any more exist… In you that journey
is”; “in the American melting pot, where nothing truly melts”, but they turns out to be not
entirely true. Every person needs to move, and during the course of the play it’s quite obvious
that even symbolical voyages exist: Joe’s emergence from his hidden and safe closet, and
accepts his desire of other men against his religious beliefs; Harper’s growing self-confidence,
Prior’s desire for living etc. The other statement that nothing truly melts in the American
melting pot is also defeated, because the stories of the different characters do intersect, most
of the part through dreams. Like in the case of Harper and Prior, who encounter each other
through fantasy, they are able to exchange important information, and experience the
threshold of revelation. There are many other supernatural elements, like ghosts and angels,
which add to the interconnectedness of the main characters. In this dense web of
interconnectedness, the characters are not sharply defined but in the contrary capable of
changing. They are all experiencing the process of self discovery, exclusion, repression and
finally and hopefully acceptance.
Maybe the melting pot need not melt entirely. The differences serve as a kind of glue
that connects them together. So slowly a change from separation to oneness can be seen and
starts a period marked by the “shift from Illness to Wellness.” 1

1 the motto of a movement, called the day of interconnectedness

http://www.interconnectedness101010.org/111111.htm