Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches Isolation Quotes

Every character in the play is isolated in some way. Harper definitely has a pretty bad case of it, though. The distance between her and her husband, Joe, is so great that she has to create imaginary friends and worlds to hang out in.

Harper and Prior both become more and more isolated as the play progresses. By the end they are both abandoned by their romantic partners. In this scene they meet each other in a shared dream, though they've never met in "real" life. It's like for a moment, in their dreams at least, they aren't quite so isolated.

Here Louis seems to use the dysfunction of the Reagan family as a metaphor for the isolation that we all sometimes experience. We're guessing that Louis is getting all reflective here because he still feels horribly guilty about leaving Prior. Abandoning his lover has made him feel totally isolated and has led him to think about the isolation all around him.

Wow... just, wow. This is what Hannah, Joe's mother, says to him immediately after he tells her that he's gay, after years of painful soul-searching. Is it any wonder the guy feels so isolated?

Prior's nurse suggests that he see a therapist when tells her that he thinks he's going crazy. Is Prior's loneliness making him crazy? Is he, like Harper, creating this angel figure to escape his isolation?

After Joes admits to Harper that he's gay, she severs herself from reality, imagining herself to be in Antarctica. She hopes that in this imaginary world she'll be able to create the companionship that she's always longed for. But if your lover is only in your imagination, aren't you still alone?

While imaging that she's in Antarctica, Harper longs to give birth to a child who has adapted to their frigid surroundings. It seems like the child is yet another imagined cure for Harper's terrible loneliness. Notice that the image of Harper crawling into her own child's pouch is the opposite of what happens with marsupials in nature. It seems like with this inversion of nature, Harper is longing to somehow take shelter in a child.

Louis' decision to abandon Prior in his time of need has made them both incredibly isolated. Here, at the end of the play, they dance in a dream – reunited for a moment.

This is the moment when Louis takes Joe home, presumably to bed. Is Louis truly attracted to Joe, or does he just need someone to help him through his self-inflicted isolation?

At the end of the play, as the angel comes crashing down on Prior Walter, he is totally alone. In a way, though, it's almost as if he embraces his isolation, drawing strength from himself.