What Is Prior's Refusal In Angels In America

In his play Angels in America, Tony Kushner uses Louis’ refusal to face Prior’s illness directly as a platform to address Louis’ overall inability to confront his own feelings, instead choosing to make them more abstract in an attempt to sound philosophical, allowing Louis to remove himself from the central narration, while still making the decisions that will best benefit him in the end. When raising the subject of Prior’s illness, Louis chooses to speak in the third person as though the event he is discussing does not directly involve him, allowing him to believe he is making a more subjective decision by pretending that he is looking at it from the outside. In doing so, he succeeds in inferring that he no longer needs to take responsibility …show more content…
The way he talks about “someone who abandons someone he loves” (Kushner 25), and his continued use of ‘he’ or ‘his’ rather than ‘me’ and ‘mine’ emphasises the fact that Louis cannot talk about how he feels about what is happening, or about how he is meant to face it. It could be argued that Louis is simply not ready to face the idea of death again, as Prior’s confession of his illness comes directly on the heals of the funeral of Louis’ grandmother, but even with the consideration of that information, there is still the underlying problem in Louis stating that an illness would “really frighten him, maybe” (Kushner 25), suggesting that Louis is more ill at ease with the idea of a prolonged battle that he would be forced to bear witness …show more content…
To make things easier for himself, Louis has turned Prior simply into an object, a sick person to be taken care of and watched and mourned. Prior no longer exists as Louis’ boyfriend, but rather as a burden for Louis himself to bear. Interestingly, this means that Louis’ manner of talking about the overall subject suggests that he wants to remove himself from the situation while still keeping the nameless person representing himself as a central character to the story. Louis is not sick, nor is he dying, but he still portrays himself as the person with the most to lose, and with the most to deal with. The point is made clearer later on, when Louis says “I’m dying” and Belize replies by saying “He’s dying. You just wish you were” (Kushner 104). Louis cannot grasp the concept of watching someone he loves die, because it is not him experiencing the pain, and it is not him that stops living. So Louis speaks in a way that suggests he is the one who will suffer, because watching Prior die will strip him of his idealistic view of the world, and leave him behind in the carnage that will