Forrest Gump may pray for God to make him bird so he can fly far, far away, but Harper Pitt seems to have missed the mark a little. Perhaps it is because God won’t talk to her and she has to make up people to talk to her (40). When things with her and Joe finally come apart, when she hears him admit that he is gay, and finally realizes that it is him she’s been terrified of this whole time – that his life and his lies would kill her inside, she calls upon her imaginary friend Mr. Lies to take her far, far away.
Harper ends up in what she believes to be Antarctica and immediately feels better. There is a reason for this level of delusion however, and it’s that she is in “the Kingdom of Ice, the bottomest part of the world” (101). As this would clearly indicate, Harper has finally hit bottom. Although she is in a place where she cannot feel the pain of what has just happened to her life, she acknowledges that she has gone off the proverbial deep end: “Wow, I must’ve really snapped the tether, huh?” (101)
She wants to be free of the fear and pain that plague her daily existence, and after finding this cold, numb place in her mind wishes to stay there forever and create her own reality. She is warned by Mr. Lies that although this place seems wonderful, she cannot have it forever, because “ice has a way of melting” (102). While it lasts though, Harper can hold on to every delusion she ever had, including the delusion that if she could just have a baby, she would somehow be safe. We can see that by her comment when talking about the baby girl she imagines she will give birth too: “And if it gets really cold, she’ll have a pouch I can crawl into. Like a marsupial” (103). The fact that she would crawl into the baby’s pouch and not the other way around shows that she doesn’t desire to be a mother, so much as she desires something to be a solution.
A marsupial isn’t quite a bird, though it does seem that Harper has flown far away from reality. Many of Kushner’s characters in Angels in America seem to be searching for a way to escape the harsh reality of their lives, and in doing so, they are failing to really live their lives. Only Harper goes so far as to create an alternate universe for herself, but by escaping her feelings and escaping the very real situation around her, she is giving up her life. When the ice melts, things will be very difficult for Harper, and she will either have to come to terms with her humanity (since she is not, in fact, a marsupial) or she will retreat to her Antarctica forever and will need to be checked into a mental facility.
Interestingly, it seems there is some hope for Harper, because her ironically named friend, Mr. Lies, refuses to lie to her. He never actually tells her she is in Antartica. He is the one who tells her she cannot have this forever, that he is not the one who can give her the love she truly wants, that she is not really pregnant and made that up, and although she ignores him, he reminds her that “even hallucinations have laws” (102) and she cannot completely escape everything just be living in her head. The fact that some voice in her head can still remind her of these things indicates that perhaps she can come back from this complete meltdown, and maybe she and her imaginary baby really can become one and mend.
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