66 pages • 2 hours read

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Act Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Acts I-II

Part 1, Act III

Part 2, Acts I-III

Part 2, Act IV-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

HIV/AIDS

Although the first officially recognized cases of AIDS were reported in 1981, the rising epidemic was ignored and dismissed as a condition that seemed to primarily affect gay men. The virus was briefly called GRID, or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. The timing of the plays’ setting within the epidemic is important, as they begin in October of 1985. In July of 1985, actor Rock Hudson, who had been an archetypical masculine leading man in over 60 films, became the first celebrity to announce that he had AIDS. It was suspected that he was gay, but he never discussed his sexuality with the press. In September, President Ronald Reagan mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time, four years after the start of the epidemic, in response to a question at a press conference. He wouldn’t give a full speech about it until 1987. Then in October, Rock Hudson died, bringing national attention to the crisis. AIDS was feared and misunderstood, and patients often died in unnecessary isolation. Gay partners were refused information about their loved ones or access to their bedsides. This history informs Prior’s response to his own body, and the significance of Harper’s revelation that there is a part of him that is untouched by sickness.

The first act of Part One is bookended by Prior’s disclosure about AIDS and Roy’s diagnosis, drawing a connection between two people who are the antithesis of one another and showing that AIDS does not discriminate. For those who, like Roy, were closeted, AIDS often had the effect of forcing people’s sexuality out in the open, even though it was never exclusive to gay men. This raises the stakes for Joe as he discovers his sexuality in a society with a deepening stigma against gay men. Although, as doctors know now, the virus can be dormant for up to 20 years after exposure, some of the signs, when they appear, are visible on the body, such as Kaposi Sarcoma lesions. An essential aspect of AIDS activism involved urging those who are diagnosed to speak out rather than remain silent. Both Joe and Roy hide their sexuality while publicly perpetuating anti-gay discrimination. Roy, who prides himself on his influence and clout, refuses to acknowledge that he has AIDS, thereby denying the movement of a potentially powerful voice. Roy demonstrates that he has no interest in anyone else when he hoards AZT, spitefully refusing to share more than one bottle with Belize.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

8,800+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,700+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

As Roy implies when he is diagnosed, HIV/AIDS is also highly politicized. His denial of his diagnosis, even to his doctor, is due to his entrenchment in conservative, Reaganite politics. Reagan’s position was that AIDS was a judgment on the gay community, and he refused to act on the crisis until he gave in to pressure. For Roy, who is already suspected of being closeted, an admission of AIDS would be considered evidence of his sexuality. Additionally, sickness is equivalent to weakness, as Roy explains when he describes Reagan’s display of health and strength almost immediately after he was shot in the chest. The play works to shift the perspective on AIDS to depoliticize and destigmatize it. The characters repeatedly refer to it as a plague, and Prior 1 and Prior 2 visit because they are two of Prior’s ancestors who died in different occurrences of the bubonic plague. They draw connections with the bubonic plague, or the “spotty monster” (92), which killed even more people but without the moralistic implications.

Blood and Bodily Fluids

When the plays premiered, audiences would have been aware that HIV and AIDS are transmitted through blood and semen. These are both elemental fluids, as blood pervades the entire body as a necessity of life, and semen is both the result of sexual pleasure and a substance used for procreation. During his cross-dream with Harper, Prior says to himself, “My heart is pumping polluted blood. I feel dirty” (40). But blood is, most of the time, a closed system, and semen can be contained with condoms. In the initial phase of Louis living with Prior’s illness, Prior tries to hide his symptoms until he finally admits that he is having bloody diarrhea. Traces of blood are escaping his body but into a receptacle that removes it from their home. The incident that ultimately terrifies Louis into leaving is when Prior becomes sick and soils himself with blood on their bedroom floor, landing him in the hospital. Louis is both afraid of getting sick and certain that he deserves it more than Prior. He immediately goes to the park and has sex with a stranger, telling him to go ahead and infect him when the condom breaks. Blood represents something more intimate than semen, which seems to be what scares Louis more than AIDS. What makes Prior’s contact with the Angel so addictive is her ability to touch him, make him orgasm, and even have sex with him with immunity. He can have intimate touch without suppressing or covering himself.

While Joe is overcome with stress from suppressing his sexuality and fighting with Harper, he suddenly coughs up blood from a bleeding ulcer that leads to multiple days of hospitalization. At the sight, Harper screams and calls for Mr. Lies to take her to the Arctic. Harper is seeing something about Joe that they have both been carefully hiding and obscuring. It is a literal manifestation of being closeted, and after seeing it, Joe comes out to his mother and then leaves Harper for Louis. Louis, who is still in love with Prior and acknowledges that he could have caught the virus from Prior, promises that he and Joe can have sex safely by covering any part that exudes bodily fluids with prophylactics. Louis’s idea of safe sex is both physical and emotional, as he knows from the start that he is only sleeping with Joe to stave off loneliness. But Louis also eroticizes taste and smell as two senses in which one person takes in the molecules of the other, replacing the idea of sexual and romantic intimacy with a kind of intimacy that can occur between two strangers. The play brings home the risk associated with blood when Roy pulls out his IV and lunges at Joe. He smears blood all over Joe’s shirt, and Belize tells Joe that he needs to dispose of it. In a figurative way, Roy infects Joe with his right-wing bigotry, although Louis’s investigation of Joe’s case decisions demonstrates that this infection took root long ago.

Ice and Snow

Both plays take place in the winter. The first part occurs in the winter at the end of 1985, the second Part 1s set in the winter after the new year in 1986, and the epilogue is in February of 1990. Winter in New York is frigid, and protection from the elements can become a matter of life and death. The characters negotiate the balance between protection and isolation, but amid the AIDS crisis, there is also risk. When Louis leaves Prior in the hospital, he goes to the park and meets a stranger. Louis almost walks away because it is too cold, but the stranger promises to warm him up. Louis insists on a condom, insinuating that the man has been having unprotected sex, but the condom breaks, and the risk is present anyways. For Joe and Harper, their apartment isolates them in their marriage. Joe escapes periodically to take long walks, later admitting that he likes to go to the park and watch men have sex. This suggests that the exchange between Louis and the stranger is just one of many similar interactions. Harper, however, is trapped because she is afraid to leave. Both times that she escapes into her hallucinations, Harper isn’t properly dressed.

Harper romanticizes the cold, longing to visit the Antarctic. When she does so in a hallucination, she imagines herself in a warm snowsuit and sees the snow and distance from Joe as refreshing and renewing. But Mr. Lies warns her that the intense cold is only temporarily numbing her emotional pain, and reality starts to seep in as Harper starts to long for a life and a companion who is equipped to help her stay warm. Snow can be overwhelming, but it also creates a clean, white blanket over a suffering world. When Louis meets with Belize, Belize becomes infuriated with Louis’s self-pity. Belize tells a confused Louis to breathe in a smell that he describes as “softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace” (106). After Belize leaves, Louis takes a breath and suddenly understands when he smells the coming snow. In the play’s perpetual winter, snow buries everything with the expectation that it will one day melt and reveal what survived the freeze. When Louis decides that he needs to leave Joe to support Prior, Louis doesn’t feel the cold on the beach. Joe does, but he strips naked to prove to Louis that he can shed his Mormonism, represented by the literal temple garment that he refers to as his second skin. But Louis does not want Joe’s vulnerability and leaves anyways.

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

8,800+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,700+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

In the epilogue, Prior, Louis, Belize, and Hannah are at the Bethesda fountain, where Louis and Belize meet earlier to discuss Joe and Prior. The fountain has a stone angel, and it is inspired by a mythical fountain in Jerusalem that sprung forth where an angel’s foot touched the ground. The original fountain dried up when the Romans destroyed the temple, but the water, when it flowed, had healing properties, and when the Millennium comes, it is supposed to start flowing again. Similarly, the Bethesda fountain in New York is dry, because it is winter and the pipes are frozen. Hannah prays that she can one day take Prior to be healed in the original Bethesda fountain, but Prior has little faith in angels and their ability to save him. Instead, he hopes that he will make it to the summer to see the pipes thaw and their Bethesda fountain flowing. As the characters have struggled to negotiate the winter and find beauty in the freeze, Prior reminds audiences that the spring always arrives eventually. And rather than wait for a miracle, he expresses the wish that he and the audience will simply be blessed with more time in hopes of surviving to see the warm weather and renewed life.