Angela King Character Analysis

Angela King is the aunt of Rodney King. Although the play centers around King’s beating and the resultant riots, the play doesn’t feature his voice or include his firsthand account of the beating. Much of what the reader gleans of King comes from Angela King’s highly personal, poignant monologue about Rodney as a young person and the trauma he and his loved ones experienced in the aftermath of his beating. Angela King paints a humanizing, personal account of King as a vivacious, special person. She remembers fishing in the Sacramento River with a teenage Rodney and watching him catch fish with his bare hands, like some “wild African[].” Angela believes her sympathetic depiction of Rodney was largely absent from the mainstream media, which sought to slander him and discredit his character. Angela is determined to secure justice for her nephew and show the public the truth of his story. She painfully recollects how it took multiple procedures for Rodney to look like himself again after he suffered extensive injuries from his beating. She cries as she speaks of Rodney and has trouble understanding why he and their family have been met with such injustice, hardship, and cruelty. Angela thinks the media depiction of her nephew would’ve been different if he weren’t a “nobody.” This speaks to the play’s theme of how powerful institutions, such as law enforcement, fail to protect their community’s most vulnerable populations, often inflicting harm upon them instead.