We aren't all that different

Angles in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a play about the start of AIDS in America; at least that’s what I thought it was about. The author Tony Kushner develops characters that are so interconnected and complex that they linger in your brain after reading. They are all like-able, dislike-able, or frustrating in their own ways. They all show their depth and symbolize the struggle of AIDS and the people that it touches, which is everyone, whether they realize it or not.

All the characters are connected. It may not be overtly, or it may just be in fantastical hallucinations, but they all touch each other’s lives in one way or another. This is the story if AIDS. It does not matter if you are successful, Jewish, a drag queen, or a Mormon wife, illness is non-discriminating. One of the very best tools of justice in the play is that those characters most unlikely to help each other end up doing just that. Their inter-connectedness creates justice and humanity for those in need. For example a couple of the pairings would be such as Prior and Hannah and Prior and Harper.

Harper meets Prior in her drug induced hallucination, and again at the Mormon center, they tell each other the reality and truth of their lives. Their friendship gives them revelations that they need to move forward, giving them justice for injustice that might be in their lives. This pairing is important to illustrate that as people our struggles are common struggles. We may be ill mentally or physically, but despite illness we are still humans with dignity. In their first meeting, Harper sees Prior’s essence, the part of him separate from his illness. She sees that part has healthy, which could symbolize hope or strength. Right after is when he hears his first voice from above, the beginning signifying his call to prophet-hood. His call to be a prophet could be to spread truth and to be a warrior for AIDS. He ends up receiving both hope and  strength  later when he stands up to the Angel, refusing to let her tell him how to spend the rest of his days, and he gets hope when he receives the AZT upon the death of Roy. His life will be prolonged and in a way that he can control, he is no longer powerless to his weak physical body. In exchange he gives Harper the strength and information she needs to come to terms with Joe’s sexuality, and in the end leaving him.

Hannah and Prior are the most unlikely pairing of all. Hannah is the strong willed, unpleasant Mormon mother that the reader would expect to be damning as she comes to New York to rescue her son Joe. Instead, she finds that Joe doesn’t need her, but Prior needs her bluntness, her strength, and guidance to overcome his fears and powerlessness in regards his situation. He meets Hannah when he and Harper are at the Mormon center. Harper gives him Hannah, who might end up been a contributing factor to his salvation from the Angels and AIDS. Hannah normalizes Prior’s illness by saying “It’s a cancer. Nothing more. Nothing more human than that (241).” Since she is an unlikely friend, her giving him back his humanity instead of criticizing his illness or his identity with this statement is a turning point for him. In return I believe he helps her to see a side of herself she didn’t realize was there. He gave her a purpose beyond from what her original mission might have been. For them both they receive aspects of human needs such as companionship and tenderness and acknowledgement of their person.

This play shows that those in the U.S. are connected through religion, migration, work, and love affairs, but also beyond that we are connected by illness, death, and salvation. We need the same things such as Prior, Harper, and Hannah did, and we can offer our wisdom and kindness to help fulfill these basic needs of human dignity and acknowledgement. The play is a tool of how AIDS touches many people’s lives connecting them to each other, but beyond that is symbolizes that our struggles are shared.