Joseph Porter Pitt

Background

Joe is a Mormon chief clerk for Justice Theodore Wilson of the Federal Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. He is married to Harper Pitt. They have a strained marriage, as Joe is a closeted homosexual. His Mormon beliefs, and what he perceives to be "right" have stood in his way of finding his true happiness. For most of his life, he has not admitted his homosexuality to his family, friends, wife, or even himself. He has been chosen by the great Roy Cohn to be his right-hand man in Washington, and Joe is faced with a tremendous crisis of conscience: He must decide whether he can transplant his paranoid, delusional wife, whom he is growing less and less fond of, to Washington, or leave her to pursue a career under Roy as one of the “Chief Elect” and proceed a homosexual lifestyle eventually devoid of his religion. Joe's path in the play (from self-sufficient and strong to helpless and dependent) is in some ways the opposite of Prior's transformation. The play finally seems to abandon Joe, excluding him from its vision of the good society because of his ideology.

Work Cited

• Enotes.com- Angels in America

• Rev. of Angels in America. SparkNotes. 23 Apr. 2006 Joe Pitt