Summary
Act Five: Heaven, I’m in Heaven
Scene 1
In the middle of the night, Prior is standing on top of his bed. Hannah, sleeping fitfully in a chair next to him, sees him. He states that She is approaching. Hannah scoffs that this is nonsense, but the lights dim.
The sound of a fiery trumpet and faraway drums are heard. The Angel, dressed in black and absolutely terrifying, appears. Hannah screams.
The Angel proclaims that she has returned, and not according to plans. Prior tells her emphatically to take the Book back because he rejects it. Hannah closes her eyes in fright. Prior tells her she told him to reject the vision, but he doesn't know what to do next. She nervously tells him he has to wrestle the Angel until she agrees to bless him.
Prior is staggered but faces the Angel bravely. She opens her arms and he charges her. She screams impossibly loudly, and Prior demands she bless him—otherwise, he will not let go. It is a life-and-death struggle and even though the Angel is stronger, Prior will not let go.
Prior yells for her to take back her Anti-Migration Book. His tenacity and courage surprise her, and even as she beats her wings, he rises higher and higher.
The Angel, strained, declares she is the “CONTINENTAL PRINCIPALITY OF AMERICA” and “THE BIRD OF PREY” (260). Prior brings her down; she screeches and stops struggling. Music sounds and white light streams in. Within the column of light is a ladder stretching to infinity. At each rung are Alephs.
The Angel states that entrance has been gained and he can return the text to Heaven. Prior is scared and looks at Hannah. She does not want him to go, but, sadly, he starts to ascend. The light grows brighter, and then it and the ladder disappear.
Hannah looks at the Angel, telling her bravely that it has no business with her. The Angel extends her hand; Hannah is compelled forward, and then she kneels. The Angel kisses her forehead and lips and states that “the Body is the Garden of the Soul” (261). Hannah has an intense orgasm and the Angel flies away.
Scene 2
Prior is in Heaven, which looks like San Francisco after the Great Earthquake. He is wearing his hospital gown and carrying the Book. Near him is Harper, petting a cat. Prior is stunned to see her and the cat. She says amiably that she just had sex, Joe left, and she took water with a lot of Valium. She asks if Prior died.
Prior replies that he is here on business and can return if he wants to. He isn’t sure if he will, and even though Harper tells him it is depressing there, he wonders if he ought to stay.
Harper explains that she now knows where Mormon energy comes from: devastation. It is what makes people migrate and build. It’s all that they can do, as God doesn’t love people any more than Joe loved her. She plans to go home now, and she tells prior that she hopes he returns. She and the cat vanish.
The Angel appears and welcomes Prior.
Scene 3
Roy’s body is on his bed and Ethel sits in the corner. Belize whispers for Louis to enter. Louis is freaked out, but Belize tells him to hurry. Louis removes his glasses and Belize is startled by his black eye, which Louis says is expiation for his sins. Belize hurriedly tells him that he can’t take the medicine out himself because they will confiscate it.
Belize pulls out all the AZT and puts the bottles in Louis’s backpack. He asks Louis what the Jewish prayer for the dead is, and says that they ought to say it now. Louis angrily refuses, but Belize says sadly that he’d even pray for Louis. Roy was awful, but he died a hard death—and “it doesn’t count if it’s easy” (266).
Louis pauses and touches Roy’s forehead. He does the best he can. As he speaks, Ethel chimes in to help.
When he concludes, Belize compliments him for doing fine, and Louis marvels that it was actually miraculous.
Scene 4
Joe enters his apartment calling for Harper. She is not there. Suddenly Roy’s ghost appears and Joe bursts out that Roy lied to him about AIDS. Roy doesn’t care; he says he feels bad because he beat someone up, but it’s okay because Louis deserved it. Joe, anguished, does not agree. He begins to cry and moan about how confused he is: he’s completely part of this world when he once thought he wasn’t.
Joe finally admits to Roy that he always knew what Roy was. He knows he lied and he apologizes for that. He faces Roy and gently puts his head on Roy’s chest. Roy is pleased and gently embraces him. Roy asks Joe to tell him what he’s learned in the world.
Joe and Roy kiss softly and affectionately. Roy regrets that he has to leave, and tells Joe, “I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easily. You’ll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you’d go” (270).
Roy vanishes and Harper comes home. She tells him dreamily she was with a friend in Paradise.
Scene 5
The scene is the Council Room of the Hall of Continental Principalities in Heaven. A Voice praises the angelic entities in attendance and draws the Permanent Emergency Council to Order.
The room contains a massive table with a 17th-century map on it. On the table are instruments relating to astronomy, astrology, mathematics, calculation, etc. Books are all over the room, a 1940s radio is in a corner, and the six Continental Principalities are sitting and standing.
All are dressed in flowing black robes and look alike, seeming to speak with a single voice. They speak slowly and carefully; their tones express “quiet, enduring desolation and perplexity” (271). They are listening to the radio mournfully, hearing the future news of Chernobyl.
The signal fades in and out. The Angels marvel that multitudes will die, but Antarctica says that she will rejoice to see it, saying what really upsets her is the wasting of fossil fuels. Australia wishes that God would return.
The Angel of America ushers Prior in. He stands before the Principalities, clearly terrified. The Angel confirms that he is the Prophet. It is clear they Angels are waiting for Prior to speak; finally, he does, telling them he is here to return the Book. They ask why. He explains awkwardly that humans can’t stop: they must progress, move, and desire; even if they desire stillness, they must be able to do so. They certainly can't wait for God. He does not believe that God will come back; and, if He does, He will have to face the destruction. In fact, he adds, they all ought to sue God for walking out.
The Angels look at each other and the Angel of America says, “Thus spake the Prophet” (276). Prior hands the Book toward them. Oceania wonders aloud whether he wants to live; Prior, shoving his grief back down, says that he does. He hasn’t done anything yet, and he wants to stop this plague. He asks the Angels to help, but Australia sadly says that they’ve tried and do not know how. Europa suggests Prior drink from this Tome of Immobility and Respite, but Prior refuses.
A moment passes and Prior requests blessing. The Angel sighs and says Prior does not really want it. Life is terrible and getting worse; there will be more Death than Heaven has tears to mourn. The Great Design is dissolving; all is collapsing. The Angels are failing and so is Earth. It is, She says, “Not-to-Be Time” (277).
The Angel asks Prior how he can want a blessing when Death is near. He sighs that he just wants more life: he has lived through terrible times and has seen terrible things, but he is addicted to being alive even if it means living past hope.
The Angels consult. Prior feels his body growing weaker. He tells them they only think they know what is coming: all they see is fear, but they should wait and see. He decides to leave Heaven, taking his illness and death with him.
Scene 6
Prior wakes up and feels exhausted. Belize is there; he and Emily tell Prior his fever broke. Prior asks for Hannah and begins to talk about his terrible, wonderful dream and how he was sent home. When Hannah enters, Prior announces that she saved his life. Hannah says she did not, but that she must go home because she had a strange dream.
Louis knocks and enters. Emily prepares to leave, telling Prior he’s one of the lucky ones. Prior asks Hannah to come back; she pauses and says she might. Louis asks who she is, but Prior says he wouldn't believe it.
Belize drops the bag of pills on the bed. Prior squints and asks what this is. He is shocked to see that they are AZT. He says that the pills are poison and he doesn’t want to do that to his bone marrow. Belize sighs that they can talk about it tomorrow. He says “ta-ta” and leaves.
Louis looks at Prior and tells him that he wants to come back to him.
Scene 7
This is a split scene of Harper and Joe in their apartment, and Louis and Prior in the hospital room.
Harper is carrying a suitcase and dressed for traveling. She is preparing to leave and says she will take the credit card. Joe begs her to stay and says he loves her, but she slaps him and says they will not meet again. What is lost is best, she tells him, and she gives him Valium.
Louis tells Prior that he knows he failed him but wants to come back; he says that he loves him. Prior loves Louis, too, but he says he cannot come back.
Scene 8
Harper is aboard an airplane, delighting in this experience. She is happy to get close to the ozone, marveling that nothing is lost forever and that life contains painful progress, even with “longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead” (285).
Epilogue: Bethesda
Prior, Louis, Hannah, and Belize sit on the rim of the Bethesda Fountain. Hannah looks like a New Yorker now and is reading The Nation. Prior is bundled. Louis is talking about perestroika and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hannah joins in.
Prior turns to face the audience. He smiles that they’ll be at it for hours. This is his favorite place in New York, especially on a crisp sunny winter’s day. He’s been living with AIDS for five years, six months longer than he lived with Louis.
As his friends talk, Prior continues that he likes this angel because she is a statue that both commemorates death and suggests a world without dying. He asks Louis to speak of this angel.
Louis is a little unsure but says that Bethesda landed in the Temple Square in Jerusalem in the days of the Second Temple; at that point, a fountain shot up from the ground. When the Romans came, the fountain dried up. Prior says Belize will speak of the nature of the fountain. Belize says that if anyone went into the waters before they dried up, they’d be healed and cleansed of pain.
Prior adds that Hannah told him of the Millennium coming and that the Bethesda Fountain will flow again. They will all be cleansed someday.
As Belize and Louis talk about Israel and Palestine, Prior continues that he looks forward to the water flowing again during the summer and that he’s going to be there a lot. He knows this disease will end many of them, but not all. The dead will be commemorated and struggle on; they will not go away and die secret deaths anymore. The world spins on only forward, they will be citizens, and the time has come. He bids everyone farewell and blesses them with more life, ending by saying, “The Great Work Begins” (290).
Analysis
The play ends on a hopeful note, with Prior, Louis, Belize, and Hannah—people of different races, religions, genders, and sexual orientation—sitting together and talking amiably. Prior is still alive and friends with Louis, who clearly learned a great deal but is no longer Prior’s lover. Hannah has adapted to city life. Belize is as Belize always is: funny, smart, and ironic. Prior has rejected the Book, the prophecy, and what it would mean for him and the human race, demonstrating that what is truly important about humanity is its ability to change and progress. Harper—who, at the beginning of the play, evinced fright at the thinning ozone layer—now says poetically that she can see “the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired” (284). Her final words are even more hopeful: “Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead” (284). She seems to have taken the Mormon Mother’s advice to heart, leaving the heavy baggage behind so she can stitch herself up.
Thus, it is indeed an optimistic ending, but not one that is achieved lightly or easily. Harper and Joe end their marriage after much suffering on the part of both. Joe, who has embraced some aspects of his identity, is seemingly still just as lost and self-centered as before. Roy is now deceased and headed to Hell, and the Angels in Heaven are still bereft of their God. In fact, the Angels seem to be the ones who lose out the most, for they do not get their God back and humans still exist to draw His attention away, if He is still anywhere in the universe at all.
One of the motifs of the play is that of the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling the Angel, and another is that of that same Jacob securing a blessing. Joe had mentioned this story to Harper earlier, telling her in so many words how he was sexually attracted to Jacob, and Roy acts out the part of Isaac with Joe. Before moving onto Prior and his wrestling, a bit more about Joe, as discussed by the critic Yair Lipshitz: “Joe identifies with Jacob sexually…for Joe, Jacob’s struggle with the angel represents the unfair battle closeted gays must wage against their sexual orientation.” It is symbolic of this desire that threatens to overpower Joe; the entire story is able to represent that of the homosexual struggle in America.
Prior’s interaction with the Angel smacks of this story as well, though there are differences. Prior says he does not know how to wrestle and refuses to take on that “manly” role. He does, however, have a limp just like the biblical Jacob after his fight with the Angel, and he climbs a ladder to Heaven as Jacob does. He forces the Angels to give him a blessing even though they do not want to, just as Jacob did with Isaac. Prior’s wrestling with his Angel has consequences for mankind, just as Jacob’s does: “[the wrestling] is also an event with political implications that establishes a collective identity, for the outcome is that Jacob receives the name that will be identified with the entire nation: Israel.” Overall, this biblical story is a way for Kushner to explore the intersection of Judaism and queerness, as well as the more general idea of the performing body.
The fact that Roy Cohn dies and the others do not is significant, for, as critic Jonathan Freedman notes, Cohn embodies everything that Kushner decries—homophobia, racism, right-wing populism, McCarthyism, capitalism, and greed—and may even function as “the objective correlative of the AIDS virus: he infects Mormon Joe with his political vision just as the virus infects Prior.” Ultimately, “Kushner must eliminate Cohn and all the phallic aggression he represents. At the end of the play, there is room for angels and angelic queers in a utopian America, but there is no place for monsters.” The four “angels” left at the end are a family, albeit an untraditional one, and stand in for the nation: if they can learn to tolerate, love, and help each other, then perhaps it is possible for everyone to do so.
