Joseph Porter Pitt

Patrick Wilson as Joe Pitt in the HBO production.

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 eventually becomes intimate with Louis. During the warm-up to their affair, Joe tells Louis of a dream he had in which the whole Hall of Justice had gone out of business: "I just wondered what a thing it would be ... if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free" (1:72). Both of whom think themselves unworthy of love. Joe feels guilty he has never lived up to the expectations of his father (mostly his being gay). Joe loves Louis, but it ultimately dumped by him for his association (and believed love affair) with Roy Cohn.Joe's path in the play (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.

Joe's character is similar to Kushner himself. Jacobus states that Kushner said he had "fairly clear memories of being gay since I was six." Also, Jacobus states that Kushner did not "come out" until after he had tried psychotherapy to change his sexual orientation. Although Joe knew all along that he was a homosexual, he tried everything he could to change his sexual orientation because he thought it was the "right thing to do."

Commentary

One of the most significant moments for Joe is when he is telling Harper about a Bible story he would read as a child. The story is about Jacob wrestling the Angel. Joe and Harper have been discussing the possibility that Joe is a homosexual. He hasn't yet admitted to being a homosexual, but Harper already knows. Joe descripes his internal struggle as "fierce, and unfair" (Kushner 55). Jacob cannot be anything but human in the struggle against the supernatural, and Joe cannot be anything but homosexual, in spite of his struggle.

In the Bible Jacob is known as a deceiver; he deceives his brother into giving him his birthright for a bowl of soup. His brother is hungry and Jacob preys on his weakness (Genesis 25). Likewise, he preys on Harper's weakness. She is described as a valium addict and agoraphobic, and Joe uses this to his advantage. Because Harper doesn't leave her house, she doesn't find out about his homosexuality until her hallucination with Prior.

= Work Cited

• Enotes.com- Angels in America

• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles, 2001.

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

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

• Jacobus, Lee A., Ed. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. 3rd Ed. Boston: Bedford, 1997.

• Rev. of Angels in America. LiteraryResourceCenter. 24 Apr. 2006 Literary Resource Center

• Rev. of Angels in America. LiteraryResourceCenter. 23 Apr. 2006 Literary Resource Center 2