YUREMAE NANOY
BS PSYCHOLOGY II-A
Angels in America Part One:
Millennium Approaches Tony Kushner
Act 1, scene 3. Harper's apartment, Brooklyn. Autumn 1985. She is
alone.
Harper Amaty Pitt (20s) is 'an agoraphobic with a mild valium
addiction'. She is mamied toJoe, a clerk in the Court ofAppeals. They
are both Momonsfrom Salt Lake City. She rarely ventures out and her
grasp of reality is shaky. The radio has become her main contact with
the outside world, and she has become particularly sensitive to
ecological issues and disasters. Her pill-popping causes her to
hallucinate. She is not only isolated from the world but from her
husband both emotionally and sexually. 'She is listening to the radio
and talking to herself, as she often does. She speaks to the audience.'
HARPER. People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking
nonsense to the air, imagining . . . beautiful systems dying, old
fixed orders spiralling apart .
When you look at the ozone layer, from outside, from a
spaceship, it looks like a pale blue halo, a gentle,
shimmering aureole encircling the atmosphere encircling
the earth. Thirty miles above our heads, a thin layer of
three-atom oxygen molecules, product ofphotosynthesis,
which explains the fussy vegetable preference for visible
light, its rejection of darker rays and emanations. Danger
from without.
It's a kind of gift, from God, the crowning touch to the
creation of the world: guardian angels, hands linked, make a
spherical net, a blue-green nesting orb, a shell of safety for life
itself. But everywhere, things are collapsing, lies surfacing,
systems of defence giving way . . . This is why, Joe, this is why
I shouldn't be left alone. (Little pause.)
3
I'd like to go travelling . . Leave you behind to worry. I'll
send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing messages
on the back. 'Later maybe.' 'Nevermore
COMMENTARY : Harper speaks in unconnected sentences that
sound like nonsense. Harper just floats. But the effect she creates is
that of someone having a vision. Like many of the characters in
Kushner's play she is in touch with a fantasy world; a rootless
wanderer searching for peace and contentment. Harper views life and
experience through a haze. Her world is in a constant state of
evolution and flux. The words she uses are a mixture of religion,
science and psychobabble. She expresses a deep need for
companionship, a fear of being alone and a sense of structures
collapsing all around her. The final word she says is significant:
nevermore .