Louis Ironson
Louis Ironson comes from a family of Jewish immigrants. He is smart, interested in politics, and works at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse. He is conflicted because he is torn between the desire to stay with Prior, the man he loves but who has AIDS, and leaving a situation he finds difficult and distasteful. Louis eventually abandons Prior, but despite this, he never stops loving and caring for him. He tries to find out more about Prior’s health through Belize, who excoriates Louis for his lack of real feeling. Louis also gets involved with Joe and, for a brief time, they have a relationship. This ends because Louis expresses his desire to get back with Prior and his antipathy towards Joe's values and behavior. Ultimately, Louis is unable to reconcile with Prior because Prior can’t forgive him for the fact that Louis left him during a time of need, but in the epilogue, it is revealed that they are still friends.
Joe Pitt
Joe Pitt is married to Harper, works for a federal judge, and is friends with Roy. Despite the fact that he is a closeted homosexual, he continues to live with Harper and tries to save his marriage. Joe is somewhat of an ethical character: when Roy asks him to take a job that would help Roy continue to do illegal things, Joe refuses, saying that it goes against his ethics. His ideas about what is wrong or right are primarily derived from his religion of Mormonism. Because of this, Joe denies his desire to be with other men; however, Joe changes radically after he meets Louis and he is convinced he is in love with him. When the relationship between Joe and Louis ends, Joe tries to repair his relationship with Harper but is unsuccessful. Joe reveals himself as a deeply conflicted individual, prone to selfishness and irrational emotions.
Roy Cohn
Roy is one of the main characters in the play (and was a real person). He is a well-known lawyer whose only interest in life is acquiring more power and influence. He is irascible, loud, cruel, crass, and self-interested. He is unethical in his work and he tries to get others to do unethical things that will eventually benefit him; he is eventually disbarred right before he dies. Roy worked with Joe McCarthy and played a major role in Ethel Rosenberg's execution; while he claims he has no regrets, the fact that he hallucinates Ethel in the last part of his life suggests otherwise. Roy is a homosexual but he denies it and also tries to deny the fact that he has AIDS. Roy and Joe develop almost a father-son relationship; this proves that, despite his flaws, Roy is human and cares about certain people. His vulnerability is revealed at the end of his life when he visits Joe one last time before moving on.
Prior Walter
Prior is Louis Ironson’s lover. In comparison with Louis, who was the son of immigrants, Prior is the member of a prestigious family that can be traced back many generations. It is not mentioned what he does for a living, except for the fact that he lives off money he received as an inheritance. Prior is diagnosed with AIDS at the beginning of the play, and from that point on, Prior changes both physically and mentally. He remains alone after Louis leaves him and then starts hallucinating about the Angel. His disease creates a link between him and Heaven and gives him the possibility to communicate with spiritual beings. The Angel gives him a task but he refuses his role as Prophet, arguing that it is not in human nature to stay put in one place. Prior managed to remain alive in spite of the disease: five years later in the epilogue, he appears once more and talks directly with the audience, expressing his hope that he will live a long life.
Harper Pitt
Harper is Joe’s anxious, depressed, and imaginative wife. The relationship between her and Joe is an unhappy one, and, as she becomes more sure of his attraction to men, her mental health problems only increase. Harper has frequent hallucinations and dreams that are hard to explain. For example, Harper finds about her husband’s sexual orientation through a dream she has where she meets with Prior. Harper is a tragic character, seemingly cursed to be unhappy. She is a Mormon like her husband, and the restrictive society she lives in only fuels her unhappiness. At the end of the play, she decides to leave her husband permanently and to move away, hoping that she will find the happiness she seeks.
Belize
Belize is a former drag queen and Prior’s ex-lover, with whom he remains friends. He is also African-American, works in a hospital where Roy is admitted, and remains a touchstone for many of the other characters. In fact, Belize is one of the nurses who take care of Roy and who glimpse a modicum of the man's humanity. Belize is also the only character in the play that seems to be emotionally stable: he has a belief system and convictions that don’t change, both morally and politically. After Roy dies, Belize takes his AIDS medications and gives them to Prior.
Rabbi Chemelwitz
Rabbi Chemelwitz is the rabbi who appears briefly at the beginning of the play. Louis goes to him after he finds that Prior had AIDS and asks him if it would be a sin to abandon him. The rabbi is unable to provide a satisfactory answer, so Louis leaves.
Sarah Ironson
Sarah Ironson is Louis’s grandmother, who died before the beginning of the play. While the cause of her death is not mentioned, it is clear that she and her grandson experienced some kind of tension.
Mr. Lies
Mr. Lies is a hallucination of Harper's in the form of a travel agent; he wears a badge labeled "IOTA" (International Order of Travel Agents). He appears a couple of times in the play and his presence is linked with Harper’s mysterious disappearance.
Henry
Henry is Roy’s long-time doctor. He is forthright with Roy about his disease but indulges him in calling it "liver cancer."
The Angel
The Angel of America is a powerful, sexual, terrifying figure. She anoints Prior as the Prophet and is flabbergasted when he does not want this honor. She is one of seven Angels known as the Continental Principalities, all of whom are mourning God's departure from Heaven in order to immerse himself in his second creation: humans. The Angels' desire is to have humans agree to stop migrating, stop progressing, and to have God return to them. She is bitterly disappointed that Prior does not want this.
Emily
Emily is a nurse who takes care of Prior.
Hannah Pitt
Hannah is Joe's mother and Harper's mother-in-law. She is tough and forthright; though she is a strict Mormon, she is more tolerant than one might think. She has less of an issue with Joe's homosexuality than with his other problems, such as drinking and mistreating Harper. When she moves to New York to be closer to him, she ends up taking care of Harper as well as Prior, whom she meets at the Mormon Visitors' Center. She can be credited with helping Prior figure out what to do about the Angel. By the end of the novel she has settled into her life in New York and appears to be more secular.
Man in the Park
Louis's depression over Prior's illness leads him to Central Park in the middle of the night, where he picks up this unnamed man to have sex with. The man says he does not use condoms, but Louis insists that he does. Their encounter sours when the condom comes off.
Martin Heller
A Justice Department employee and friend/colleague of Roy's. He also tries to convince Joe to take the job, and he is the person whom Roy calls to secure the AZT by means of bribery and threats.
Sister Ella Chapter
A real-estate agent in Salt Lake City and Hannah Pitt's only real friend, she worries about Hannah going to New York and leaving the pleasant, saintly bubble of Utah.
Prior 1
A 13th-century ancestor of Prior's who died of the black plague. He and Prior 2 visit Prior to herald the imminent arrival of the Angel. He does not approve of Prior's homosexuality.
Prior 2
Prior 2 is an elegant 17th-century ancestor of Prior's who died from the plague due to a bad water pump.
Eskimo
The Eskimo appears to Harper when she hallucinates Antarctica.
Homeless Woman
This disheveled and mostly crazy woman lives in the South Bronx and, with a bit of prodding, helps Hannah find her way to the Mormon Visitors' Temple in Manhattan.
Ethel Rosenberg
A real person, Ethel, along with her husband, was executed during the height of the Cold War Red Scare due to the suspicion that they were Communist spies. Their trial was notoriously lacking in due process, and they were electrocuted. In the play, she haunts Roy like she is his conscience, finding pleasure in his suffering but also managing to feel some sympathy for his pain.
Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov
"The World's Oldest Bolshevik," who gives a portentous speech about the past, change, and the current state of superficiality and meaningless in the world. It is unclear where or when this takes place, or even if it is real.
