As I was reading this play, there was a theme that really stuck out to me: Power.\u00a0 Both Roy and Prior are suffering from the same disease, yet the two could not be more different with the way they interpret power and the way they treat others. Power is used as a contrast between Roy and Prior, showing how the two use their power to shape their destiny and affect the world around them.<\/p>\n
In Part 1, Act 1, Scene 9, we see Roy in a doctor’s office receiving his diagnosis with HIV, and as Roy grapples with this information, he also intimidates Henry because he is so insulted by the implication of his sexuality. He even outright dares Henry to say that he is a homosexual, which he never does because Roy said that he would sue into oblivion. In Part 1, Act 3, Scene 5, Roy lectures Joe about how he was the one who effectively killed Ethel Rosenberg because he sees life as a ‘dog eat dog’ world where one must “make the law or [be] subject to it” (Kushner 114). He also says in this scene to Joe that there isn’t anything wrong with him, contradicting what he said before regarding his ‘liver cancer’. To me it seems clear that Roy Cohn is a man obsessed with control and blinded by rage and denial that he ends up dying, sad and alone, all the while declaring victory.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Prior freely declares that he is a gay man, for example in Part 1, Act 3,\u00a0 Scene 7, and also admits that he is dying. By embracing his truth, he centers his power in courage and endurance, ignoring what the Angel tells him saying that he can’t just stop and go backwards, we must keep moving and we must make progress.<\/p>\n
To summate, power is a lens through which we can view the play and a tool that Kushner uses to show that true power is rooted in hope and resilience, not in anger and hatred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was reading this play, there was a theme that really stuck out to me: Power.\u00a0 Both Roy and Prior are suffering from the same disease, yet the two could not be more different with the way they interpret power and the way they treat others. Power is used as a contrast between Roy … Continue reading Truth is Power<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1557"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1569,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions\/1569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}