Failure to measure up

“The failure to measure up hits people very hard. From such a strong desire to be good they feel very far from goodness when they fail” (53). This quote from Joe in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America so accurately sums up much of the human experience. One of the common fears shared by people in this country is the fear of failure. So much of our culture is built around the idea of success, and not to succeed is the same as being bad.

In his play, Kushner explores the idea of failure and of goodness in many of his characters. Roy, for example, is certain that success in his career is what defines him. He is a man with clout, and that seems to be the most important thing to him. (45) If he were to be seen as a gay man, he fears he would lose that status, and therefore would fail to measure up. In the world that Roy occupies, this would be a fate worse than death. This feeling is not unique to Roy.

Harper feels that she has somehow failed to measure up because she is trapped in a marriage where nothing she does can win the love and attention of her husband. They are “buddies” and even when they kiss it is a “buddy kiss” and lacking in any sort of romantic connection or passion. (27) Harper sees this lack of intimacy as a failure on her part because she is somehow lacking. She seems to hold onto a delusion that if she can prove herself, if she can be good enough, that Joe will suddenly begin to love her the way a husband should. In fact, when it is revealed to her in a dream/hallucination that Joe is gay, she says “something just… fell apart” (34) and it is the story she has been weaving for herself that fell apart. She realizes the imaginary house she has built for herself is falling apart and already feeling so far from goodness, she embraces that label by intentionally behaving the way “a mentally deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would” (36).

Louis feels that he is failing Prior by leaving him while he is at his weakest and yet Louis can’t cope with staying. We see his struggle with failure and the idea of this separating him from goodness as he talks to the Rabbi in one of the early scenes. He turns to the Rabbi for guidance from a religious point of view, perhaps for forgiveness for “the crimes I may commit” and is told to find a priest because “Catholics believe in forgiveness. Jews believe in guilt” (25). Louis does feel guilty for not being able to deal better with Prior’s illness, but the idea of sickness, frailty, and death terrify him to irrational levels. He knows that Prior needs him and yet, he cannot do the good thing, he fails his lover by leaving and it does hit him hard, but yet, he continues to move further away from goodness by moving out while Prior is stuck in the hospital and cheating on him with strangers in the park.

Success being linked to goodness is an idea that so many people in the world face. As Kushner’s characters show, that theme manifests itself in a variety of different ways for different people, but nearly everyone in America whether young or old, gay or straight, religious or secular can relate to this idea that failure is somehow the universal equivalent to being bad. And nobody wants to feel bad inside.