{"id":977,"date":"2022-10-31T22:43:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T02:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=977"},"modified":"2022-10-31T22:43:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T02:43:23","slug":"harpers-valium-addiction-a-form-of-escapism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/10\/31\/harpers-valium-addiction-a-form-of-escapism\/","title":{"rendered":"Harper’s Valium Addiction: A form of escapism"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

In Angels in America<\/em>, Harper\u2019s addiction to Valium in order to experience her hallucinations is representative of her desire to escape the truth; however, imagination is finite, and no matter how hard she tries, the truth almost always seems to reveal itself.

In the interaction between Harper and Prior within Harper\u2019s hallucination and Prior\u2019s dream within Act 1 Scene 7, Harper comes to the depressing realization that even the construction of her hallucinations has limitations and that they\u2019re \u201creally only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth\u201d (Kushner, 33). This underscores the way in which Harper\u2019s hallucinations may appear to be boundless, when in reality, her imagination can only extend so far. Harper describes this as a \u201cdepressing hallucination\u201d (Kushner, 33) because that means that even her Valium won\u2019t allow her to run from the truth and the reality that her marriage will never be what she wants it to be, because it was constructed around the repression of Joe\u2019s true identity as a gay man.

It\u2019s ironic that Harper enters the cyclical nature of her hallucinations as a means to escape from the truth, when it\u2019s one of her hallucinations that forces her to confront her reality and the truth that her \u201chusband\u2019s a homo\u201d (Kushner, 33), as unveiled by Prior. Although this truth was characterized within the play as the \u201c[t]hreshold of revelation\u201d (Kushner, 34), in some ways it seems as if Harper was always aware of Joe\u2019s homosexuality, which contributed to her continual usage of popping Valium pills, because that meant that she did not have to confront this reality.

Harper has such a strong desire to escape the truth that Joe is gay, because she confesses that she can \u201cmake up anything but I can\u2019t dream that away\u201d (Kushner, 52), where \u201cthat\u201d is referring to the love that she has for Joe. In confronting the truth, Harper would have to come to terms with the fact that the love that she has for Joe is not reciprocated, where her hallucinations don\u2019t even have the power to transform or erase the existence of this love that she has for him. <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Angels in America, Harper\u2019s addiction to Valium in order to experience her hallucinations is representative of her desire to escape the truth; however, imagination is finite, and no matter how hard she tries, the truth almost always seems to reveal itself. In the interaction between Harper and Prior within Harper\u2019s hallucination and Prior\u2019s dream … Continue reading Harper’s Valium Addiction: A form of escapism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","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\/5018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}