The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins. What's interesting is that, though the same sentence is used to end both parts of the play, the intention behind it changes. The angel's idea of "The Great Work" is essentially conservative.
She wants human beings to stop growing and changing. Earlier in the play, though, Prior rejects this idea, saying that such a thing is impossible. Their relationship is always bitter but heated and icy by turns. Belize, however, demonstrates his considerable compassion for Prior, who tells him the full story of the Angel's visit.
After her dramatic arrival, she gives Prior a prophetic book and explains that she seeks his help to halt the migratory tendency of human beings, which the Angels in Heaven believe tempted God to abandon them.
God, she explains, left Heaven forever on the day of the San Francisco earthquake in , and since then his Angels—whose vast powers are fueled by constant sexual activity—have been rudderless and alone. To reverse the trend, the Angel says humans must end their constant motion, their addiction to change.
Not surprisingly, Prior is aghast at her words and vows to flee from her at all costs. Roy learns that his political opponents plan to disbar him for an ethical lapse, but he vows to remain a lawyer until he dies. In a friendly rapprochement, he gives Joe his blessing, until Joe reveals that he has left Harper for a man—he has been living for a blissful month with Louis. Stunned and angry, he demands that Joe end his gay relationship at once. Ethel comes to observe him in his misery.
Joe's wife, on the other hand, spends her days at the Mormon Visitor's Center watching a diorama of the Mormon migration featuring a father dummy who looks suspiciously like Joe. When Prior drops in to conduct research on angels, a fantasy sequence ensues in which Louis and Joe appear in the diorama. The formerly silent Mormon mother comes to life and leaves with Harper, giving her painful but valuable advice on loss and change.
Louis and Joe's idyll draws to an end when Louis says he wants to see Prior again. At their meeting, Prior coldly insists that he must present visible proof of his internal bruises. Belize later tells Louis about Joe's relationship with Roy, whose politics and personal history Louis despises. When Louis angrily confronts Joe, their fight turns physical and Joe punches him. He apologizes, horrified, but they never speak again. Roy nears his end as well, reeling from Joe's disclosure and from Ethel's news that he has been disbarred.
He dies, but not before tricking Ethel into tenderly singing for him. After his death, Belize summons Louis to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, to demonstrate thanks for his stash of AIDS drugs and forgiveness. Ethel leads Louis in the prayer, the play's emotional and moral climax.
After Prior suffers an episode at the visitor's center, Hannah takes him to the hospital. She wants him to speak. To speak is to live.
The Angel asks Prior to begin his work—their work—by prophesying. Silence and hesitance equal death. To be the messenger for all we wished they could say? The truth is open to debate. Cohn says that he has liver cancer, and Henry follows suit. At night, he goes for walks in the Ramble, in Central Park where the angel at Bethesda looks after us all , to observe men who are in touch with their bodies.
Like most of the characters, except Cohn, Joe and Louis want to be free in themselves, to have their bodies without apology and threat of death or loss. Louis is frightened of love, too: he perceives it as a responsibility, not as a freeing agent.
When Cohn is put on his floor, Belize knows exactly who he is; he takes the AZT—at the time, a rare and valuable drug—that Cohn has stockpiled, and gives it to the needy, including his closest friend and former lover, Prior.
Sexuality dictates and shapes its own culture. The character is a dream of black strength, an Angela Bassett of the ward.
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