{"id":574,"date":"2021-03-29T20:44:17","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T00:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/?p=574"},"modified":"2021-03-29T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T00:44:17","slug":"the-gay-man-and-the-mormon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/03\/29\/the-gay-man-and-the-mormon\/","title":{"rendered":"The gay man and the Mormon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Kushner\u2019s, Angels in America, tells the story of people who struggle with dealing with the AIDS virus that ravages the queer community at first. The lack of support and attention for this epidemic led to the loss of many lives and these fictional accounts share a glimpse of the difficulties that followed the neglect. An unexpected pair share an intimate moment between Prior and Hannah who come from opposite ends of beliefs and upbringings. Prior, a gay man, who is suffering from the effects of being diagnosed with AIDS, and Hannah the mother of Joe, a closeted gay man, who is a Mormon from Utah. After an attempted confrontation with Joe and an ensuing panic attack from his health complications, Hannah assists Prior to the hospital despite her hesitations.<\/p>\n<p>In Act 4, scene 8 sets the scene in an examination room at the hospital. Emily, who is Prior\u2019s nurse-practitioner, is critiquing Prior for over-exerting himself causing him to worsen his health and lose weight. Kushner utilizes capital letters to emphasize Prior\u2019s tone and carry gravity to his panic and anger after dealing with this virus for so long. Kushner also uses the hyphen-minus to demonstrate how Prior cuts off Hannah whenever she speaks to get the genuine answer to his question of whether she thinks he seems insane? Irritability and lack of patience seem to be a given when in a state of mental and physical fragility. The trials following this virus do not only affect the physical aspect but also the mental state especially after Louis left Prior by himself.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, at this moment, he is accompanied by Hannah who is very patient with him despite his attitude and insults towards her son. Prior says he has \u201cbeen driven insane by&#8230; your son,\u201d alluding to him as a home-wrecker after discovering of the affairs Louis and Joe had (Kushner, 239). The ellipsis may refer to his continuous train of thought that is never-ending which leads to jumping from thought to thought after arguing with Emily. Another hint at his passive-aggressive comments was when he introduced Hannah as his \u201cex-lover\u2019s lover\u2019s Mormon mother\u201d (Kushner, 238). By mentioning that she is Mormon this may connect to his dislike for Joe even more since he is a closeted-gay, republican, and Mormon; all aspects of a typical, cisgender, straight male that may be homophobic. After Prior shows Hannah his lesions in a moment of distress an interesting comment was made by Hannah. She refers to Prior\u2019s AIDS virus as cancer, \u201cNothing more. Nothing more human than that,\u201d which can imply her difficulties with understanding the queer community (Kushner, 241).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-577\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/files\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-29-at-3.47.16-AM-300x199.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/files\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-29-at-3.47.16-AM-300x199.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/files\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-29-at-3.47.16-AM-1024x680.png 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/files\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-29-at-3.47.16-AM-768x510.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/files\/2021\/03\/Screen-Shot-2021-03-29-at-3.47.16-AM.png 1204w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.hivindv.org\/when-to-test-for-hiv\/part-1\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Kushner\u2019s, Angels in America, tells the story of people who struggle with dealing with the AIDS virus that ravages the queer community at first. The lack of support and attention for this epidemic led to the loss of many lives and these fictional accounts share a glimpse of the difficulties that followed the neglect. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/03\/29\/the-gay-man-and-the-mormon\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The gay man and the Mormon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}