Does anyone else feel bad for Joe Pitt?

I agree in the end we see Belize Lewis Mrs Pitt and Prior in the park and we know after 5 yrs they are making it BUT what about poor Joe did he go on or did he back track and try again to conform. BUT wasn't it all so wonderfully done. I almost got to see iin the two night production

I really like Joe and I was disappointed with how the film treated him. I hear there is actually even less resolution in the play, but I can't verify.

"Blending is the secret"

There is even less resolution for Joe in the play, since the scene in which his mother sees him coming out of the subway and says that maybe she'll see him at dinner was entirely new for the movie. That scene at least gives a glimmer of hope for Joe's immediate, if not long-term, future. I don't personally have a ton of sympathy for Joe, but I also think that not having every character's story tied up neatly makes the play feel more true--in real life, sometimes people lose touch with each other, parents and children don't always maintain close relationships, and people can create their own, non-biological families from adult friendships. That Hannah and Joe are not together in the final fountain scene is not surprising to me based on all we've seen before; first because Louis is there (Louis and Joe had such a bad breakup) and second because Joe and Hannah obviously had personality conflicts and incompatibilities that had nothing to do with Joe's homosexuality. Also, just because he's not in the final fountain scene doesn't mean he's not still a part of other aspects of Hannah's life--just not her friendships with Prior, Louis, or Belize.

It's hard not to feel sorry for him. He wants everything - Harper, Louis, Washington - ends up with nothing. Joe as a character represents, among other things, I think, the many dilemmas one faces in a world full of choices, almost overwhelmed by them, and shows in a gruesome way how much is lost by indecision. The tragic chaos that is life is depicted brilliantly in Joe's person.

'Does anyone else feel bad for Joe Pitt?'

Yes.

Of course, aren't we suppose too? Here is a man in conflict, a man in pain, living a lie in the closet. He's portrayed as pure trying to keep his evil Gay-ness at bay. Leading his conflicted wife into madness wasn't intentional. If you have an ounce of compassion you even feel bad for Cohn and he was a very bad man.

Hey, guys. I was actually coming on here to say the same thing. Since you guys already have a good discussion going on about it, I thought I'd share what's written in SparkNotes, particularly when Louis confronts Joe about his politics:


The implications of the moment are disturbing. For one, it seems inconsistent on Louis's part: he has known Joe's politics since the day they met. That Joe takes a conservative position on judicial issues like environmental protection can hardly come as a surprise; even Joe's gay rights ruling, while lamentable, ought to be understandable to Louis. But Louis makes no further attempts to understand—even Joe's impassioned cries that he loves him fall on deaf ears.

Joe's attempts to justify himself—his snide reference to Louis as "the guy who changes the coffee filters in the secretaries' lounge," his defensive retort that the children were not really blinded or that law is different from justice, and most especially, his physical assault on Louis—seem intended to turn the audience against Joe, to make us take Louis's side once and for all. Certainly Kushner does not present Joe in a sympathetic light or offer him the chance to defend himself—he only reappears briefly in two scenes, mostly pleading ineffectually with Harper, and he is excluded from the triumphant epilogue at the Bethesda Fountain. All the other characters are forgiven to some degree, even Roy; Joe alone is unceremoniously booted from the play's society. And yet his only "crime" is that he is personally and politically conservative. This disconnect has led some critics to ask whether Kushner is fair to Joe. John M. Clum writes, "Kushner drops Joe off the face of the earth shortly before the end of Perestroika, as if he is unredeemable or simply not very interesting…Yet in every production of Angels in America I have seen, Joe is the character I care about, anguish over." Joe's struggle to come out of the closet with dignity, to contribute to society or to maintain what seems to be a sincere spirituality count for nothing, with Louis or with the playwright. His apparently heartfelt love for Louis is disregarded and unlamented. In the end, he cannot escape that most dreadful label possible, "Republican." It is an aberration in Kushner's otherwise sympathetic and generous vision, but, perhaps for this reason, it is all the more provocative.


I wonder if maybe Patrick Wilson played Joe more sympathetic than he was supposed to, and that's why many of us on here, including myself, didn't think he was so bad as apparently we were supposed to.



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That was actually the first thing to cross my mind when the credits rolled - what about Joe?

A sad, sad man who (seemingly) is left with nothing.