At the end of Millennium Approaches, the first part of Angels in America, the Angel says to Prior: "Greetings, Prophet; The Great Work begins: The Messenger has arrived" (125). Given everything we've read thus far of this play (so up to p. 247, or the end of Act IV of Perestroika), explore and explain what you think this "Great Work" is. What is Prior called to do? Why is he the one called to do it? What is his calling significant in the context of our larger course themes and questions? (For example, in relation to queerness, community, justice, the history of HIV/AIDS activism?)
As you answer this question, integrate at least two examples/quotations/citations from the first four acts of Perestroika (so from pp. 147-247). Aim for at least 250 words.
As you answer this question, integrate at least two examples/quotations/citations from the first four acts of Perestroika (so from pp. 147-247). Aim for at least 250 words.
As someone who isn’t religious at all, it’s hard for me to think of “The Great Work” as something religious. As I say this, I also think that Prior isn’t sure why he’s the prophet too. In the days after the Angel visits him in his bedroom, he starts experiencing things physically. Prior tells Belize about how his eyes feel weird, something in his peripheral. My interpretation of this is that part of him being a prophet is that he needs to keep his eye on one specific thing. One goal he needs to meet. I’m not sure what this goal is, and once again I don’t believe Prior knows either. That’s just in scene one though. After rereading scene 2, I discovered this scene is very important, most likely the most important, because this is the main interaction between the Angel and Prior. The Angel says to Prior that, “Heaven reaches down to disaster and in touching you touches all of Earth.” Angels in America takes place in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. This would most likely count as a disaster. I think Angel is telling Prior that because God can’t reach every person infected with AIDS in this time of crisis, He chose one to preach this comfort that God is still with them. For what reason Prior is chosen, I am not sure. Angel however continues to tell Prior that God has left the Angels, and hasn’t returned. Why He is gone is unclear to me. My interpretation of Angel’s speech on page 172 is that humanity needs to stop progressing so quickly while God is away. This may be because the Angels believe that humanity won’t make the correct decisions while God isn’t looking over them.
ReplyDeleteIt seems Prior is given this mission or “Great Work” for multiple reasons. First, I think he is there to bridge the gap between those who don’t believe queer people exist. I think this might be why Kushner includes the religiosity. At first the interaction of communities who are very religious and are not religious at all seemed odd but it makes perfect sense because it seems to be a source of intolerance for queer people at least during this period. The connection between Prior and Harper is a good example. They are both at sorts of dilemmas in their lives, they both have relationship problems, they both are ill in some way (for Harper it is mental and Prior it is physical). There are a lot of parallels between them which makes it easier to bridge the fact that her religion doesn’t believe in his existence. I think their relationship foreshadows how Prior will bridge the gap with Hannah later. Prior meets Hannah and she makes sure he gets to the hospital when he is really sick (Page 235-236). I think this encounter allows Hannah to see him as a real person who is really suffering. It seems he is legitimized in Hannah’s eyes like a person deserving of any care or consideration. When Hannah asks Prior if he is homosexual (Page 240) is when I think she is realizing that she has to accept her husband is also queer. It could be that Prior’s mission is multiple things but at this point in the book it seems he is really bridging the gap between people. He just lives as a person with AIDS and bridges the gap for those who are not ready to accept it/do something about it.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the angel, the “Great work” is to stop people from moving around so humanity will cease to exist. For me, however, I think that what she says to Prior goes against any religious beliefs. Prior, like any of the prophets in history, is scared of what is happening to him. This part of Act Two Scene One reminds me of when God speaks to Moses in the Exodus story. Prior and Moses have no clue why they were chosen and were initially reluctant to spread divine messages (Prior still being reluctant). God eventually convinces Moses and Angel says the following to Prior:
ReplyDelete“You can’t Outrun your Occupation, Jonah. Hiding from Me one place you will find me in another.” (179). I think Prior was chosen because he actually feels lonely and fearful about his AIDS diagnosis, yet there is a glimmer of hope in him. After his encounter with Angel, he says the following to Belize:
“Maybe I am a prophet. Not just me, all of us who are dying now. Maybe we’ve caught the virus of prophecy.” (182). Through the bigger themes, the calling definitely is significant for the AIDS epidemic. During the time, and even beforehand, plenty of religious institutions turned people who identified as gay, lesbian, transgender, and more away. Having an openly gay man become a prophet was a huge qualification from Prior during a time of prejudice within religious communities towards the LGBTQIA+ community. I can see how peoples’ perspectives were changed as well when we see Hannah, a conservative Mormon woman, accept Prior and Joe for who they are after seeing Prior suffer from pneumonia.
While this calling was not what Prior anticipated nor wanted, it opened a door to acceptance from religious people, which I think is the “Great Work” that Angel should have spoken about.
Prior being the character who is easily identified as the play's protagonist has allowed us to see his growth and experiences of being abandoned by Louis, to the pure struggle of being contracted with AIDS, to the overarching test of being a victim of social prejudice exemplified through Roy's character. Thus, the Angel's words to bestow some type of prophecy onto Prior, "Greetings, Prophet; The Great Work begins: The Messenger has arrived" (125) at the end of Millennium Approaches, suggests Prior's most important role in the play. I believe Prior is called upon, even though he may not accept it or know why he is being called, to be the character who will, in a sense, give way to queer resistance and authority to the LGBT community.
ReplyDeleteA quote that is significant and alludes to the authority Prior has in being a sense of hope is, "Each angel is an infinite aggregate myriad entity, They're basically incredibly powerful bureaucrats, They have no imagination, They can do anything but They can't invent, create" (Act 2, Scene 2, p 165). Prior explains to Belize how the Angel along with religiosity at the time, is a powerful entity who attracts ignorance by having power to do anything but Prior could be the one who changes all of this. The Angel's message of humanity to 'stay put' is seen through the quote of, "Each day you (Prior) awake..movement! Bewitched by humanity, in mortifying imitation of you, his least creation, he would sail off on voyages…" (166-168). She mistakenly believes that halting the motion of human beings will convince God to return to Heaven. The entire play works to convince us that stability is no solution to loss and that forward motion, however painful or alarming, is the only thing people can do to survive. As his AIDS continues to plague him but not dictate him, Prior will have the ability to bridge the missing empathy towards the AIDS and LGBT activists movement.
From what I have read so far, I believe that the “Great Work” that Prior has been called to by the angel is sharing the truth. I believe that he is not only asked to share the truth but is also asked to help people come to terms with it. I think that this is foreshadowed when he meets Harper in his dream/her drug induced hallucination and tells her that her husband is gay. When Prior reveals the truth to her not only does he help her move on with her life but also gives Joe the ability to move on and accept his truth. Another thing that affirms my theory about Prior being called to speak truth is the fact that Belize calls him to gossip as soon as he finds out that Roy had been admitted as an HIV/AIDS patient. In turn the one specific truth that Prior is called to share is that human beings should stop giving in to their migratory nature. The angel explains that she believes that if people were to stay put, God would return to heaven. I think that Prior is chosen to complete this task because he is the only one who has lost just about everything in the play, meaning he really doesn’t have anything left to lose. Having lost his health and partner with no descendants he finds himself almost completely alone, aside from Belize, who doesn’t even believe him when he tells him about the angel. Now in terms of this specific message, I believe he is also selected because of his lineage and family history, how his ancestors came settled and never uprooted themselves again.
ReplyDeletePrior, after a ravening consummation of self with the Angel is told he is a prophet. This information shakes his core, beliefs, and value system. As if he was not privy already to the motifs of existentialism--give the nature of his disease--he is now tasked with a question of others and self as both relate to God and society. It seems that prior is picked among many reasons, if not only for this reason, for his position in both lineage & terminability. Prior will die soon. His lineage will die--the era of the prophet would end with him--the message, then, must be shared now. The timeliness of Prior's call is not caused only by Prior's impending death, but also spurred by the wave of progressivism that has swept Earth: when there is progress & movement on earth there is tragedy in Heaven. Prior is, initially, called to stop the forward advancement of progress, to stifle movement, and to reinstitute custom.
ReplyDeletePrior, though given a more austere charge, finds himself engaging characteristically in queer performance--queering the message of the Angel. He jokes to Louis, "I have a hobby now. I haunt people. Fuck Home." This, to me, seems to be Prior's true call.
When the Angel of America reveals herself, saying, "Greetings, Prophet; the Great Work begins: the messenger has arrived.", Prior is being presented to his own and other's reality; personal and group hardships and obstacles, particularly for those belonging to the gay community. I believe that the Great Work, is an embodiment of a call to action, one where he is first asked to provide awareness about all the men dying from AIDS and told to challenge societal constructions of normalcy and holiness. In a conversation with Belize, Prior recognizes the absurdity of this human neglect against gay men, and realizes that what they're living through a plausible time. "It's 1986 and there's a plague, half of my friends are dead and I'm only thirty-one and every goddamn morning, I wake up and I think Louis is next to me... it takes me a long time to remember... that this is real." (pg. 181). Not only does he make this clear by commenting that half is friends are dead but by mentioning Louis' departure as well. I think this was very intentional, in the sense that Louis' represents all those who a person loved but left when it was revealed that they had acquired the disease. This victim is left alone, dealing with their illness and last days on their own. Despite his personal afflictions and conflicts, Prior accepts the role as prophet and for that matter, challenges social notions of normalcy or holiness. "Maybe I am a prophet. Not just me, all of us who are dying now. Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy. Be still. Toil no more. Maybe the world has driven God from heaven, incurred the Angel's wrath." (pg. 182). In this quote, Prior is not only challenging our understanding of prophecy but makes a correlation to the other people, who like him are dying but must be prophets as well. Prior gives himself and others dying from AIDS, a position within the religious world, and attributes highly-esteemed roles within the religious scheme. This, in and of itself, is a challenge to normalcy or holiness.
ReplyDeleteIn the second part of Angels in America, we discover more about the angel when one quite literally appears in front of Prior. We discover that the angels are hermaphrodites and are very sexual creatures. In fact it was their sex with each other that started creation, according to this angel. Because of the AIDS epidemic, this play often links sexuality with death, but in this case sex is linked with creation.
ReplyDeleteEarlier in the play, an angel approaches Prior and says, "Greetings, Prophet; The Great Work begins: The Messenger has arrived" (125). This scene has many parallels to the Bible, specifically the story of Moses. The angel gives Prior a book detailing what message he is supposed to spread much like Moses when he is given the Ten Commandments. The angel says, “Open me Prophet. I am The Book. Read” (2.2.36). The task the angel has given Prior is to stop the growing and changing of society. I think the angels want this stoppage to occur because of their thoughts on how society is today. The angels see no hope for society because it is so far from God, and until God can return to the everyday lives of people in society, society should remain still and not progress without God. Prior says, “As the human race began to progress, travel, intermingle, everything started to come unglued. Manifest first as tremors in Heaven” (2.2.70). The way humanity is acting is causing problems for heaven, because everyone is too focused on progressing, and not focused on how we are progressing.
In Prior we see fear- fear of the unknown, of death and afterlife, and even of himself. When sharing with his rattled friend Belize in the park about his visit from the angel , he goes on a tangent about he is “Just a fa**ot” who has disrupted both heaven and earth, and left to live a painful, lonely existence. Through magical realism and satire, we see the author king holes in the so-called American Dream, particularly through the lens of Mormonism, a religion offering a promise land and redemption to those who seek refuge, like Harper and Joe. An unlikely follower, though, becomes entranced too- As Prior’s illness gets worse, he seems become more and more engulfed by these hallucinations, and, after a visit by an angel, embraces his apparent role as a prophet. Swallowed my guilt and self-loathing, Prior carries the angel’s message- that this kind of sin on earth has caused God to abandon heaven- heavily on his back as he fights off his own material fate. The “Great Work” he has been called to do, so it seems, is to ‘correct’ the ways of his community and, as Louis gets so riled up about, reverse progress to a simpler time. Everyone simply wants to “Go back to the way things were” because in the land of the free, progress cannot come without tremendous growing pains. As Frederick Douglass warned, “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
ReplyDeleteThanks to whomever posted this comment. But it's coming across as author "Unknown"--please let me know who posted it and I'll give you credit. Thanks!
DeletePrior is called to make the human race stop migrating, progressing, and trying to find meaning. The angel proclaims that God got bored of the angels and that they think in order to get him back they must stop humans from progressing. The angel pretty much says that God doesn’t like them because they’re not very intelligent. She says, “He grew weary of Us.
ReplyDeleteOur Songs and Fornications.
His Angels: Who cannot Imagine, who lack that Faculty.
Made for His Pleasure, We can only ADORE.
Seeking something New,
He split the World starkly in Two.” (Act 2, Scene 2) She continues by explaining that God kept leaving heaven until the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and he never returned after that. When she is speaking about her and her fellow angel’s abandonment she gets flustered and yells, “YOU HAVE DRIVEN HIM AWAY! YOU MUST STOP MOVING!” (Act 2, Scene 2) In this outburst it shows the audience that the angel isn’t some all knowing and powerful being but more of jealous and selfish being. The angel is not acting out in the interest of both heaven and earth but only wants God to return. This relates to our bigger theme because the angel kind of symbolizes America. The angel is afraid of change or progress like America is and acts out only in self interest like much of America. The angel is also a powerful being, like America is powerful, and uses her own power to push her own agenda. She reveals that she is drawn to Prior because he’s dying, she says, “Vessel of the BOOK now: Oh Exemplum Paralyticum:
On you in you in your blood we write have written:
STASIS!
The END.” (Act 2, Scene 2.) This quote confirms that Prior is chosen as profit because he is sick and he symbolizes “the end.” It’s written in his blood, and he isn’t getting better so the angel has chosen him to do what she wants him to do. I’m conclusion, the “great work” Prior is asked to do is to reverse what the human race has come to learn and know.
I think that the “Great Work” has to do with preventing the fall of the human society as has happened with the Angel world before humans. While the Angel is calling to Prior to be the prophet they say, “SUBMIT, SUBMIT TO THE WILL OF HEAVEN!” (Perkestorika, 171) The calling of Prior is something he resist at first, but will eventually submit to. I think that Prior is the prophet due to his middle ground understanding of the Queer community. He is able to connect with individuals who do not understand the community as well as Queer people themselves. I also think Prior is chosen because he is also effected, “Fuck you. I’m a prophet. Reasonable? Limits? Tell it to my lungs, stupid, tell it to my lesions, tell it to the cotton-woolly patches in my eyes!” (Perestroika, 217) Prior is not immune to the AIDS virus and has the ability to be an ally to those effected. The queer community can use Prior as a way for outsource and spreading of the word. As a prophet is supposed to do he has the ability to warn them of what the Angel says is yet to come.
ReplyDeletePrior is tasks with becoming a Prophet by an Angel towards the end of Millennium Approaches. To my understanding, I believe that the Angel wants humanity to stop moving and to stop progressing. In Act II, Scene 2 of Perestroika, the Angel tells Prior about God leaving and that we as a humanity has “driven him away and [we] must stop moving” (Kushner, 172). The Angel believes that change and movement is destructive, especially in a time when God is still away. In a conversation with Belize and Prior, Belize states, “the world doesn’t spin backwards” (Kushner, 175). Moreover, progress and movement was necessary during the AIDS epidemic, and to completely stop our tracks, isn’t the answer -- especially if we want change and justice. Moreover, Belize acknowledges that Prior is “afraid of time,” but time will continue to move on and that change is inevitable (Kusner, 175). Belize suggest to Prior that he must hold on to hope no matter what. Because of Prior’s illness and his queer identity, Prior represents a larger marginalize community because he is gay and is living with AIDS. The Angel recognizes that Prior’s “death” is near and that he is vulnerable. By choosing him as Prophet, he will have “nothing to lose” if he completes his Prophecy duties. During a time when society has turned their backs on the gay community, Prior brings into light the struggles of gay men living with AIDS and how they must continue to fight -- even at a time of hopelessness and heartbreak.
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