“I’ve set as my goal to get so strong I could peel onions all day long and never shed one tear, I won’t even feel the fear as I watch me and the human race disappear.”
– Agnus Angst
Agnus is about Kids, teenage rebellion, kids in the culture trying to make sense out of life, especially a kid who is as smart and sensitive as Agnus, she is an artist too. And she is critical of the culture, as critical of the culture as the culture is critical of her. Her mother was a lesbian performance artist who traveled all over the world, her father was a genetic scientist, a bio-engineer research scientist, and his new wife doesn’t like Agnus. Agnus is a latchkey kid who has been hard to handle, she comes home and her parents have changed the locks on her, they are practicing tough love with her.
The Bitterness that Agnus feels is the idealism going sour. She had the hopes and the idealism, she is perceptive. She also feels abandoned and the anger that she feels in a way is the anger we should all feel because she still has her idealism, but when you give that up you don’t become angry… you become cynical. So she still has idealism within her and hope within her, the anger is her way of telling society it’s a cry for help. But developmentally teenagers have to rebel and the more society is uncaring and cut off, the angrier they get. Just like the lyrics in punk music, it is the awareness of being angry and the awareness of all the things in the world to be angry about. – Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner
