Misery Loves Company: Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt

In Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, two of the most polarized characters are Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt.  Roy Cohn represents all that is unholy - greed, power, deceit and murderous revenge, while Joe Pitt emerges as a man of conviction; with a clear sense of right and wrong making him an unsung hero despite his own self-deception about his homosexuality.  The central conflict between Roy and Joe is the moral dilemma posited by a job position Roy has offered Joe in the Department of Justice for The Reagan Administration.  Roy Cohn is a man of extravagance who lives not in an apartment but owns the whole building as the spirit of Ethel Rosenberg sarcastically announced.  The bravado of Roy is a ploy to morally deceive Joe's better judgement and his faithful belief that Roy is fundamentally a good person is rocked to the core.

In the beginning of the play we are introduced to Roy and his phone.  His phone is the most significant element of his existence as it justifies his ego.  With a simple touch of a button he can reach any person in the government - all the way up to The President himself.  This makes Roy undermined his actual governmental position with threats, blackmail, theft and countless other illegal affairs.  In Act 2, Scene 6 Roy says talking on the telephone is what he does best.  He is in a restaurant with Martin Heller (a colleague who works in The Justice Department) and Joe Pitt discussing the possibility of Joe accepting his proposition.  Roy asks Martin to rub his back, calling him dear and ultimately Roy complies.  The act of rubbing Roy's back by Martin is a statement on the authoritative and powerful position Roy has.  He asked Martin to do this to coax Joe into accepting the job by showing him how he can get anything done for him - even as simple as getting a back rub by a man of obvious stature in The Justice Department.

Conversely, Roy is met with the faithful, God-fearing conscience of Joe Pitt.  Deeply rooted in his Mormon faith, Joe is not swayed by the promise of riches and power.  Instead, he is honest through and through regarding his interest in the job and the opportunity is offers.  It is not, however, in the sense of greed but rather duty and accomplishment that Joe considers the position.  The juxtaposition of Roy's negation of any type of moral fiber and Joe's pure of heart perspective of politics creates a whirlwind of turmoil in their relationship.

Roy Cohn is clearly a miserable man.  The threat of him being disbarred and trying to manuever Joe into accepting a Justice Department position to clear his name (see Act 2, Scene 6) is a testament to Roy's conivining, self-serving and desperate way of living.  He wants to stay a lawyer just as his Daddy was until his "bitter last day on Earth".  He does not care the cost of others, morally nor Earthly for that matter.  He would gladly sacrifice another life to ensure his position in the government.  A clear indication of this is seen when he talks about Ethel Rosenberg and how he had an active role in getting her the death penalty even though her execution was in no way justifiable.

The derisiveness of Roy's actions comes to a head when Joe turns down Roy's offer.  It is with this one action that unleashes Roy's fury.  He accuses Joe of being weak saying "you think you're above being alive?" (Act 3, Scene 5).  Politics, Washington and The Justice Department are Roy's holy trinity.  To deny yourself such power would be blasphemous.  However, it is in his anger that you see Roy's utter desperation for someone to cross over to his very lonely, cold side of life.  He attacks Joe, who is dumbfounded by Roy's violent outburst and you see the relationship completely unravel.  Roy could not control Joe or assert any type of power over him that would ultimately aid in Roy's success.  Instead, Joe represents Roy's failure in both life and politics.  Joe was Roy's last pawn - the final card to his last hand on Earth.  And yet, Joe refused to compromise his ethics and his standards ultimately destroying Roy.  Roy tried very hard from the beginning to placate Joe by listening to his concerns about Harper to confiding in him about his "cancer".  In the end, however, Roy recanted everything by severing all ties with Joe and denying being sick in any way.  The scene ends with Roy on the floor in terrible pain - the pain and consequence of discovering your own mortality admist terribly dark secrets.

Angels in America

"I say fuck the truth, but usually the truth fucks you" said Prior Walter. The hallucinations experienced with Harper were clearly defense mechanisms to keep out the truth they so desperately wanted out of. The irony is that the truth saturated even the most bizarre hallucination. You can live in the lie but the truth will always be looking at you. I think the most brutally honest character in "Angels in America" is definitely Harper. Her "undersexed and pill-popping" lifestyle is something she doesn't deny. She does deny, however, that her husband Joe is a "homo". But she does so sparingly and only for a moment during the hallucinatory extravaganza with Prior Walter - a manifested subconscious emotional connection both so desperately seek. I think she maybe the only one denied the truth from someone else, while others are in denial of themselves. Conversely, however, we do see in her hemmed statements and accusations that she feels she should never have married Joe. So perhaps her denial has been so easy to accept because it is coupled with Joe's denial. Their happiness is fake and she thinks that should at least count for something.
The beginning of the play begins with the Rabbi saying that such great voyages no longer exist in this world, referring to the journey of the deceased Grandmother. It was such a great, original form of foreshadow. It is clear that what we are seeing instead are several journeys of self-realization, acceptance and undeniable truth. The struggles with truth are universal. "Angels in America" focuses on AIDS during 1985 and is able to delicately thread such a devastating theme of disease and hopelessness into something wholly inspirational.
Roy Cohn is, in my opinon, the most symbolic of homosexual sentiment in maybe the last 30 years of politics regarding LGBT legislation. His tirade is the most poignant and explicit in terms of how homosexuality is viewed. He says that who he sleeps with and sexual taste are merely labels, a "pecking order" in the food chain. What sticks, in his delusional world, is the clout he has. He says homosexuals don't have clout. No one will pick up the phone when a homosexual calls and no one knows them. Instead he is Roy Cohn, right hand man to Reagan and is therefore exonerated from his homosexuality. That is what the political stance of Reagan was during his administration. He ignored the AIDS epidemic, allowed it to be called the gay disease and refused to acknowledge its threat to the "normal", heterosexual sector of America. Roy was a reflection of Reagan's political stance, deeply imbedded with religion and ignorance (not that the two or synonymous).
Despite the religious overtones of angels in the title, religion has very little to do with the story itself. It's as though religion is used as a vehicle for denial. I suppose it is a little bit different in actuality as religion is sometimes the deadly blow to self-expression, but I feel like Joe uses religion as a curtain rather than a conviction. He even married Harper who hates the "Utah talk" he was spouting. Prior thinks his religion is homosexuality while Martin's Judaism was approached briefly when he was speaking to the Rabbi about leaving Prior (who was deathly sick). I think the purpose of the religions in the play were to show that cross culturally homosexuality existed. Socio-politically it existed. Even across genders it existed. The point in everything was that the truth is always relevant, always present and always better if embraced.