Writing And Identity

ESSAY QUESTION: 7. ‘Lawyers are … the High Priests of America. We alone know the words that made America. Out of thin air. We alone know how to use The Words.’ (Angels in America, p. 221 [Perestroika, 4.1])

Write an essay on the legal and religious power of words in Angels in America. How is language used to create new identities, and to deflect unwanted identifications?

Identity is theanswer to the questions who I am, what I am, where I come from, where I go. But it is not only a personal exercise of self-knowledge. We create our identity with the information that comes from experience in a process that lasts a lifetime. Our life experience is conditioned by the environment we live in so our identity is not created individually but collectively. Human beings are social beings andtherefore need to live with other fellow human beings. The basic form of social grouping is the state. The state is thus a recurring theme when talking about identity. We identify with other fellow citizens because their life experiences will be similar to ours.

Let us analyze the representation of identity in relation to different aspects of the play by Tony Kushner Angels in America. It, asthe name suggests, takes place in U.S. so we will first analyze the perception of identity in this country. America is a country where ethnic and cultural divisions are not new, they have been there from the beginning. American culture is considered multicultural as it is the combination of different racial groups from around the world. And although it is said that its identity exists despite theabsence of an objective basis in historical reality, the great dilemma of U.S. identity is that it is devoid of ethnic or cultural references. This circumstance appears reflected in the play.

LOUIS: (...) with people here of every race, (...) what defines us isn’t race, but politics. (...) Here it's really a collection of small problems, the monolith is missing. Oh I mean, of course I supposethere's a monolith of White America. Straight White Male America.
Thus Louis believes most U.S. citizens could be classified that way.

America was the land of opportunity, the place where everyone could be somebody important.
At the beginning of the play in the funeral of Louis's grandmother, she appears to us described as ‘not a person but a whole kind of person’ (Angels in America, p.16[Millennium Approaches, 1.1]). It refers to that she did not only help to increase the population in America when she emigrates to this country but she carried with her the whole culture of their country of origin. Her origin country culture would merge and end up being part of the mix of cultures that American identity is.

All emigrants wanted to forget his past, assimilated to the new cultureand become Americans. But the differences never disappeared. Diversity, pluralism, multiculturalism has been present throughout American history and they have contributed to create frictions and divisions, but they have also helped to create the American identity.
The process of assimilation into the new culture can be observed again in Louis’ family. All his aunts and uncles, the first generationborn in the U.S., have Jewish names, 'Morris, Abraham, and Samuel (...) Esther and Rachel "(Angels in America, p.15 [Millennium Approaches, 1.1]) while their children, the second generation born there, have names typical of this country. Thus we perceive how characteristics of their culture of origin are gradually lost. If Sarah Ironson had not migrated to the U.S. she probably would not haveended up having a grandson named ‘Eric’, for example.

For many years the United States saw itself as a nation that was basically gathering people to merge them into a nation. And this is why Americans have thought new ways to define their own identity as a nation. So they launched a campaign of American nationalism in which they all, among other things, had to speak English and salute the flag...