Sentiments, Politics And Religion In Angels In America

Marco Hernández


Sentiments, politics and religion in Angels in America

One of the main characteristics of Angels in America is the multiplicity of themes it deals with. The title itself gives acquaintance of this: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. This essay is going to deal with some of these topics, such as emotional relationships, politics, homosexuality and the relation between allof them. The role of politics regarding feelings is outlined mainly in the characters of Louis and Joe, and also Roy Cohn, whose conservative perception of the world and the role of power influence his thoughts about his own homosexuality. Therefore, this paper is going to talk about the role of sentiments and politics in the play, giving acquaintance also to other factors related, like religion,race and AIDS, and analyzing the interconnections between all of them.

Diagram of relationships in the play. The broken line represents no real relation, or momentary connection. The italics stand for punished characters. Extracted from Tony Kushner in Angels in America or how the American History spins forward (Alfonso Ceballos)

As a starting point we will focus on a comparativeness ofLouis, and Roy Cohn, probably the most politicized characters. Roy Cohn is the antithesis of Louis. Although they do not directly know each other they despise the kind of people each other are. However, we can find lots of similarities between them, which show us a social dichotomy in the perception of the Jew. Both are Jewish, with certain frequency tend to give political speeches when they have gotthe chance. Roy, from his position of a powerful republican lawyer, is extremely closeted, feature shared to certain point with Louis, whose family does not know about his homosexuality. This secrecy around sexuality responds, in Roy’s case, to his politics circle and own conception of the world, and in Louis to the religiousness of his family.
None of them is observant regarding religion.Louis, however, after knowing of Prior’s disease goes to see a rabbi looking for relief for “the crimes he may commit”. The rabbi, however, responds him “Catholics believe in forgiveness. Jews believe in Guilt” Despite his supposed rejection to God, as he claims when he discusses with Joe, he charges with this guilt, which is also traditionally associated with the social image of the Jew, throughoutmost of the play. This feeling is balanced by Roy Cohn’s practice of usury, also culturally associated with Semitic culture. This usury must not be understood in economic terms, but rather in the sense of influence peddling. He is obsessed with the clout, what makes him, paradoxically, homophobic and even anti-Semitic, since he despises the Jews cloutless, who, according to him, tend to becommunist, like Ethel Rosenberg or to certain point Louis (he is not a communist but has Left wing ideas). As Jonathan Freedman suggests in Angels, Monsters, and Jews: Intersections of Queer and Jewish Identity in Kushner's Angels in America (1998) “the unstable and shifting equation between the sexual transgressive and the Jew is established in Millenium Approaches” where we see the difficulties of thehomosexual with AIDS to fit in a society where the gay is a bad dream of America in words of Prior, in a way that could remind of the Jew, as the Rabbi Chemelwitz claims addressing to Louis’ family: “You do not live in America” Freedman concludes: “The fate of the Jew, like that of the queer, is to be eternally other even in the utopian land that proclaims itself a haven for all aliens. At the endof the play, Prior proclaims, “we will be citizens”, underlining his own alienation in the quest to overcome it (Perestroika 148)
Roy, by rejecting calling himself a homosexual, and trying to ignore his Jewish inheritance, tries to be a citizen, running away from the alienation these double condition means. Probably this is what makes him feel attracted to Joe, who represents the most classic...