The AIDS Crisis and the Incarnations of Fear in Tony Kushner’s "Angels in America"

Anna Bendrat

Abstract


The discussion of Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America is set at the intersection of crisis and fear inherent to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. The paper delves into two distinct manifestations of fear induced by this crisis – the fear of commitment in the face of AIDS, exemplified by Louis Ironson, and the fear of self-identification as a gay individual, embodied by Joe Pitt. By integrating insights from the psychology of fear, the article strives to single out social and cultural connotations of the AIDS crisis as depicted in the play. It marks out Kushner’s perceptive construal of fear as a destructive force in the context of the deteriorating human relationships.


Keywords


Angels in America; AIDS crisis; fear; Tony Kushner; Martha C. Nussbaum; The Monarchy of Fear

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2024.48.2.13-33
Date of publication: 2024-07-10 11:05:24
Date of submission: 2024-04-07 16:29:18


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