Tony Kushner's Angels In America

In this world, a person’s perception may affect their way of being by the alteration of their beliefs, which is the standard of their opinions and their critical way of thinking. An introduction of a different perspective may influence their judgment by giving them more knowledge and reasoning to pursue a goal or to neglect different kinds of opportunities or even responsibilities. This idea represented by the playwright and screenwriter, Tony Kushner in his drama called “Angels in America a gay fantasia on national themes”, in which, the story focuses mainly on the characters: Prior Walter and Roy Cohn, who receive a definite time of living due to their illness called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDs. Initially, the news of their …show more content…
Angels are known to rejoice for their arrival that it is why the ancestors want Prior to be ready. It also shows how their presence leads to telling the real destiny of Prior, which is to be the Prophet of God. Being unable to make judgments, the angels need God to do it for them. God’s abandonment of the Earth leads to their choice of electing Prior as their prophet who will judge people for them. According to Barnett, “the Angel gives Prior the means to see the future, but, rejecting this vision, he prophesies the opposite of what he has been told; more life instead of devastation” (“Purgatory” 479) It is one of the instances in which a new perspective is given that influences their judgment to disregard any given opportunities because it contradicts their belief system. This idea relates Prior’s choice of living and not becoming a prophet. When he sees the devastation as the result of his acceptance of his fate, it predicts that balance throughout the world. It contradicts his view of survival and fighting. For Barnett, “life/death and Heaven/Hell are not contradictions but states of coexistence” (“Purgatory” 480). Through the help of the angel, Prior experiences these words even though they are paradoxical. He suffers from living with AIDs, in which, he could consider hell. His encounter with death, as he ascends to heaven to get the blessings of the Continental Principalities for a longer living, shows how two different opposites are to be connected. With Kushner’s association of his drama with the angels, it shows how the life of a person and the death connects. Angels are one of the supernatural entities in the Earth that are believed in different religions to have the ability to kill and resurrecting of an individual. Their presence in the drama is one of the factors that makes it a magical realist