Running head: HAMILTON’S DRAW 1
Hamilton’s Draw
Using Narrative Coherence and Fidelity to Explain Mainstream Popularity
Logan Glass
Willamette University
Author Note
This paper was prepared for Rhetoric 341W, taught by Professor Collins. HAMILTON’S DRAW 2
Abstract
How does an artifact – a movie, a book, or even a person – enter popular culture? The process of rising to fame is so complex, affected by so many factors, it’s tempting to argue that there’s no pattern in fame at all. However, narrative theory provides a concrete approach. An artifact may become widely known because it constructs a narrative that resonates with many viewers. That narrative becomes the key to understanding the artifact’s popularity. This paper uses the 2015 musical Hamilton to illustrate this type of analysis. The musical’s foundations in the American monomyth and its hip-hop presentation create potent narrative fidelity and coherence, which captivate audience members. Drawing on these findings, this paper suggests that in the future, investigating the ways coherence and fidelity function in pop-culture artifacts may explain those artifacts’ significance to the culture in which they exist.
Keywords: Hamilton, pop culture, coherence, fidelity, hip-hop, rap, monomyth
HAMILTON’S DRAW 3
Hamilton’s Draw
Using Narrative Coherence and Fidelity to Explain Mainstream Popularity
Trends are often baffling. A single facet of pop culture will rocket to fame, and before anyone realizes, it’s everywhere. It’s the must-have toy, the must-see commercial, the must-hear jingle – and often, its sudden popularity is completely inexplicable. Reactions often vary: some love it, some hate it, and some become exhausted by its constant presence in their lives. But in any case, everyone is talking about it, and no one knows why.
One perfect example is Hamilton, the historical hip-hop opera that took over Broadway in
2015. Constantly talked about, widely praised, sometimes criticized, the show became the must- see ticket on the most prestigious stage in America. That’s extremely strange, because it’s the first historical hip-hop opera in a culture that associates both history and opera with obscurity.
By all accounts, Hamilton should be a niche interest, not a national phenomenon. But is its place in contemporary social consciousness all that strange? Or is there occasionally method in the madness of fame and virality? In other words, can one isolate the reason Hamilton has become so popular?
This study seeks to do exactly that. It argues that Hamilton’s popularity is based on its narrative – specifically, the narrative’s similarity to familiar cultural myths and the tools it uses to increase the audience’s connection to the story. Ultimately, the musical meets two key criteria for an audience’s favor: coherence as a unified story and fidelity to audience expectations. In analyzing this musical from the perspective of narrative theory, this paper demonstrates one way to answer a familiar question: why does everyone suddenly care?
HAMILTON’S DRAW 4
Artifact Description
Hamilton is a fictionalized account of the life of Alexander Hamilton, a key figure in founding the United States of America. In the first act of the show, Hamilton leaves his
Caribbean homeland for the American colonies and meets a group of revolutionaries: the
Marquis de Lafeyette, John Laurens, Hercules Mulligan, and Aaron Burr. Hamilton believes that the colonies need an immediate and decisive revolution. However, Burr is more cautious, advising Hamilton and his new friends to be less aggressive and to take a subtler approach to colonial independence. As the show goes on, Burr acts as Hamilton’s foil and rival; where one succeeds, the other fails. It’s worth noting that Burr serves as the narrator, framing Hamilton’s life as a rise and fall Burr witnessed firsthand. Surprisingly, Burr’s regrets about his own actions lead him to portray his bitter enemy in an admirable light, notwithstanding his opening lines describing Hamilton as “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman.”
Hamilton also meets the three Schuyler sisters, Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy. Angelica and
Eliza both charm him, but Angelica convinces him to marry Eliza, the more sensible match, even though it breaks Angelica’s heart. Shortly afterward, Hamilton rises to fame in the Revolutionary
War, fighting alongside his friends and General George Washington against King George III.
Throughout the act, he announces his intention to prove his worth, rise in status, and leave his mark on history.
In Act II, having survived and won the war, he encounters new challenges. Thomas
Jefferson missed the war but has returned from France to help his friend James Madison fight
Hamilton in matters of state. Jefferson, Madison, and Burr each have a vision for the new nation, and Hamilton must square off with them at every turn. Occasionally, he relies on now-president
Washington for support, but after eight years, Washington abruptly leaves office and renounces HAMILTON’S DRAW 5 his political influence. Adams takes the office and fires Hamilton, then also chooses to leave the presidency behind. Now, Hamilton is caught between Burr and Jefferson as they clamor for the role.
At the same time, Hamilton publicly reveals his affair with another man’s wife, Maria
Reynolds, to explain his suspicious behavior and escape false charges of treason from Madison,
Jefferson, and Burr. Because of this shame, Hamilton will never be president himself. Then his teenage son Philip is killed in a duel when Hamilton’s advice for deescalating the fight fails.
Between that tragedy and the affair, it takes years for Eliza to recover her trust in her husband. In the end, fallen from grace, Hamilton dies in a duel himself – shot by Burr. The surviving characters, including Eliza and Burr, eulogize him: yes, he left his mark on history, but he also left his mark on them.
This story is presented as a hip-hop opera: the plot is almost entirely conveyed through rapping, although the genre varies to accommodate a scene’s mood or a certain character’s personality. For instance, Angelica raps as fast as Hamilton, because she’s his quick-thinking intellectual equal, but Eliza sings to counterbalance his brash, decisive style. Likewise, Jefferson is an older politician, from the generation before Hamilton’s, so his introductory song “What’d I
Miss?” is a leisurely jazz number to Hamilton’s newer, light-on-his-feet rap. In line with this musical heritage, the show’s original cast was composed mostly of black and Latinx performers.
Mostly, the few white actors played antagonists, like loyalist Samuel Seabury and King George
III.
The show was created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, an American composer and actor.
Inspiration came from the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow; Miranda was drawn to the story of Hamilton’s life and consulted the book as his main historical source. He HAMILTON’S DRAW 6 first performed a song from Hamilton in May 2009 at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word. The full show debuted in February 2015 and moved to Broadway in
August of that year. A follow-up album called The Hamilton Mixtape, Miranda’s original name for the musical, was released on December 2nd, 2016. It featured unreleased demos from the show’s production and covers of the musical’s songs by popular artists.
The musical was a critical favorite and a box office hit. Starting in September 2015, a month after it moved to Broadway, it was constantly sold out, and ticket prices climbed. Thus began the recurring ticket lottery called “Ham4Ham,” wherein a small group of winners could purchase front-row tickets for $10 each – a Hamilton for Hamilton. The lotteries were accompanied by miniature performances by the cast. At first, these performances were live, but they were also broadcast online after the crowds for the in-person shows grew too large and interfered with traffic.
The founding of the United States of America is inherently a political story, so there’s no shortage of controversy around Hamilton. In fact, Miranda included certain aspects of his own politics in the show itself. For example, in the final song about the Revolutionary War, French- born Lafeyette and Caribbean-born Hamilton pause and reflect on their imminent victory, crying,
“Immigrants! – We get the job done.” And on The Hamilton Mixtape, performers K’naan, Snow
Tha Product, Riz MC, and Residente rap about their own mistreatment as immigrants in the song
“Immigrants (We Get The Job Done),” sampling Lafeyette’s and Hamilton’s line from the musical. In these ways, the show and its associated media frame immigrants and their social contributions as essential to the nation’s construction. This was a bold stance during the 2016 election cycle, when controversy over immigration to the United States escalated. HAMILTON’S DRAW 7
The cast and crew have even challenged politicians in person, like Vice President-elect
Mike Pence, who attended a Broadway performance of Hamilton on November 18th, 2016. After the performance, actor Brandon Victor Dixon, whose character Burr became Vice President by the end of the show, delivered an onstage message from the cast directly to Pence. The statement implored him “to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.” Controversy erupted about the message’s propriety. Some supported the cast’s statement, but others, like
President-elect Donald Trump, decried it as a personal attack.
And finally, while published works from historians demonstrate mixed feelings about the historical accuracy of Hamilton, they generally agree with advocates of racial equality that the show falls short in addressing racism. Many argue that casting people of color in the roles of white people draws attention away from real people of color at the time who could have been included as characters. The casting also dissociates the white founders from their white supremacy, especially because the show barely addresses slavery. Miranda fails to account for the seemingly-loveable characters’ roles in upholding a horrifying institution. The only song in which the characters extensively debate slavery was cut from the final show, leaving a few passing references and an elephant in the room.
Literature Review
Neither musicals nor comprehensive biographies of founding fathers are hot-button issues. But Hamilton resonated with audiences and brought both to the public eye. Audiences, critics, and historians alike were left baffled. Why this story? Why this medium? And why now?
It helps that the musical’s content resonated with the political climate of 2015 and 2016, the first two years of its run. For instance, Patrick Healy (2015) compares the show to the race for the Republican presidential nomination, asserting that “the characters on the debate stage and HAMILTON’S DRAW 8 the Broadway stage are remarkably in sync: brazen, unpredictable, even outrageous” (para. 1).
He begins by comparing now-President, then-candidate Donald Trump to a character in a play:
“a scene stealer” destined to “dominate the spotlight” (para. 2). He also points out that the
“sacrifices of immigrants and veterans are in a spotlight” of their own in both the musical and the
Republican race (para. 3). Pointing out the similarities in rhetorical imagery like symbolically destroying stacks of paper (para. 6) and between real politicians and Hamilton characters (para.
7), Healy makes a compelling argument that Hamilton is popular because it reflects the political world of its audience.
Others argue Alexander Hamilton himself merits modern attention. In 1994, Thomas
McCraw published a paper which argues that “Hamilton’s economics of national development has the same timelessness as Jefferson’s politics of individual liberty” (p. 31). In this paper,
McCraw examines Hamilton’s writing and biography to understand the depth of his rhetorical power and his vision for the new American government. In the end, he draws parallels between the economic woes of late-twentieth-century America and Hamilton’s economic insight.
McCraw argues that Hamilton’s life story reflects more than the economic concerns of the 1990s or, by extension, the 2016 election cycle; one can find echoes of all national concerns in his writing and return to him for wisdom.
These are compelling reasons that audiences would enjoy the story of Alexander
Hamilton. But why do audiences enjoy the story told in this way? Why didn’t Alexander
Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the biography that inspired Miranda, catch fire the way the musical did? After all, they tell the same story. But they don’t convey the story in the same way; the musical uses a uniquely compelling narrative. HAMILTON’S DRAW 9
Walter R. Fisher (1984) posits that, because “humans are essentially storytellers” (p. 8), audiences don’t base their decisions and assessments of rhetorical arguments exclusively on
“rational standards taken essentially from…logic” (p. 2). They also base them on the quality of the narrative conveying the rhetoric. Specifically, to assess the quality of a narrative, audiences apply "their inherent awareness of narrative probability, what constitutes a coherent story, and their constant habit of testing narrative fidelity, whether or not the stories they experience ring true in their lives" (p. 5). Somehow, Hamilton creates an especially strong sense of narrative probability, also called narrative coherence, and narrative fidelity. This is how it draws audiences.
In part, the show creates narrative fidelity and coherence by adapting historical fact into compelling fiction. Of course, this adaptation leaves the musical’s factual accuracy open to criticism. For example, Nancy Isenberg (2017) points out that Burr’s character is typecast based on “unoriginal” depictions by historians through the years (p. 297) and that Hamilton’s personality is stripped “of its less than desirable qualities” (p. 297). The omitted qualities include his calculating nature and his “undisguised elitism and militarism” (p. 298). Kenneth Owen
(2017) points out the same thing, describing Hamilton as a “committed militarist” with “known admiration for the British fiscal-military state” (p. 512), which are details the musical leaves out.
Owen argues that while Miranda commends “Hamilton’s belief that the written word could make a difference,” “the content of Hamilton’s ideas…are all but absent from the musical itself” (p.
512).
Among all these changes from history, the most glaring is the distortion of Hamilton’s stance on slavery. As Benjamin L. Carp (2017) points out, this issue is rooted in the biography by Rob Chernow: “Miranda relied too heavily on Chernow, who exaggerated Alexander HAMILTON’S DRAW 10
Hamilton’s antislavery credentials” along with other biographical information (p. 289). Hamilton in the musical is vocally abolitionist, while, as Joanne B. Freeman (2017) puts it, “the historical
Hamilton’s views on slavery were decidedly more complex” (p. 257). Additionally, Freeman fears that a lighthearted, simpler take on the Revolutionary War “may discourage people from grappling with America’s far more complex and problematic past” (p. 257). Marvin McAllister
(2017) addresses this issue, too. He states that as the characters – again, played by actors of color
– become more vocal about ending slavery, “a dissonance emerges between two revolutions: the actual American Revolution versus Hamilton’s aspirational revolution. Black and brown bodies did serve bravely in the Continental Army, but they were not the revolutionary leaders—and slaveholders—depicted onstage” (p. 284).
However, critics also explore why the show is inaccurate in these ways. Isenberg states that the show “has more to do with contemporary politics” than with “rewriting history” (p. 298)
– in other words, that the show’s goal is not to change public perception of the past but to make a statement about the present. Of course, these explanations don’t excuse the harmful inaccuracies, like the skimming-over of slavery or the “fake feminism” which Isenberg argues “ignores the tremendous resistance” faced by real feminists in this era (p. 289). But by examining possible explanations for these historical inaccuracies, one can understand better how Hamilton adapts fact in service of its narrative.
The show adapts more than fact; it adapts musical genres, too. As McAllister reminds us, hip-hop developed “as a counterculture rooted in the issues and aspirations of primarily black and brown people” (p. 279). That alone makes it an odd choice for telling the story of America’s founding, a story usually populated entirely by white people based on the subjugation of people of color. However, hip-hop “shares a core conceit with the birth of our nation” (p. 279): a HAMILTON’S DRAW 11 fascination with origins. “Hip-hop emcees or lyricists often write themselves into existence by crafting originary myths or histories” (p. 280) the way Hamilton develops the origin story of himself and of America throughout the musical. Hamilton portrays “a moment of total political upheaval,” as argues Jon Caramanica in a 2015 New York Times interview. “Of course that requires a fresh musical approach” (para. 5).
This musical style also lends itself to several narrative tools identified by Genette (1980).
Keep in mind the distinction between story, the events of a narrative – here the biography of
Alexander Hamilton – and the narrative itself, the portrayal of the story – here the musical.
Genette distinguishes between “the time of the story and the (pseudo-) time [sic] of the narrative” (p. 35). In other words, the story’s time is fixed, one event of definite length occurring before another, but because the narrative merely represents the story, it can change aspects of the story’s time in service of narrative coherence and fidelity. The narrative can alter the length of an event, or its duration (p. 86), by devoting more or less attention to it, and the narrative can change the frequency of an event or idea that only occurred once in a story, either omitting it or repeating it (p. 115). The narrative can even segment the story and present the segments in a new order (p. 35). Hip-hop can do these things, too. Featuring both the creative flexibility of spoken word and the repetitive structure of song, a rap can stretch events, repeat them, and alter their order to make them ring true with the rest of the story and with the audience’s lives. Genette’s concepts shed light on the way hip-hop shapes a story into a compelling narrative.
To understand the compelling narrative Hamilton shapes, we can compare it to a more familiar one: the American monomyth. In 1977, Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence noticed “that the conventional formulas of contemporary entertainment are often linked together in a single recurrent pattern” (p. xi). They call this pattern “the American monomyth” and give HAMILTON’S DRAW 12 examples ranging from the “Star Trek” franchise to radio shows to Disney movies. The myth takes place in a “monomythic Eden,” whose single flaw is its “impotence in the face of the evil of others” (p. 170). The myth assumes “that democratic institutions are incapable of lifting the siege” (p. 178) imposed by evil powers; the citizens of Eden cannot save themselves. Therefore, a figure from outside this Eden must overthrow these powers and restore the land to its perfect, peaceful state. These figures are “lone crusaders” (p. 178). In each story, this single person has the gifts to fight the evil, but these gifts also isolate them from others and ultimately force them to leave the Eden for good. This narrative has been adapted time and time again, becoming a mainstay in storytelling in the United States. It’s so familiar that its use creates instant narrative fidelity and coherence: the audience has accepted this narrative before. The American monomyth bears striking similarity to the narrative of Hamilton. However, the two are not identical. This analysis will argue how both the similarities and the differences between the musical and the mythic structure have such a profound effect on audiences. It will also highlight times the musical alters the duration and frequency of the story’s events to enhance the moments most crucial to its fidelity and coherence.
Analysis
In the first scene of the show, other characters tell the audience all about Alexander
Hamilton before he sets foot on stage. His rival Burr describes him as “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman” who “would have been dead or destitute” without his brilliant mind
(Hamilton, 2015, “Alexander Hamilton”). The company sings to Hamilton, “You could never back down/You never learned to take your time!” and asks “Will they know what you overcame?/Will they know you rewrote the game?” (“Alexander Hamilton”). Concluding the opening number, each main actor sings about their characters’ relationships to Hamilton: they HAMILTON’S DRAW 13
“fought with,” “died for,” “trusted,” “loved,” and finally “shot” him (“Alexander Hamilton”). A complex man, to say the least.
Soon, we learn about Hamilton in his own words, as he assures the audience that “I am not throwing away my shot” at fame and glory (Hamilton, 2015, “My Shot”). Meeting a group of revolutionaries in a pub, he announces to them, “I probably shouldn’t brag, but dag, I amaze and astonish/The problem is, I got a lot of brains but no polish” (“My Shot”). He’s a genius, and he proves it by rapping faster and longer than any other character in the scene. Soon, his new friend
Laurens exclaims, “Let’s get this guy in front of a crowd!” (“My Shot”), hoping Hamilton can rile revolutionary feeling in other colonists.
From these two songs alone, the audience knows who Hamilton is: he’s a newcomer, a weirdo, and a genius. He fits the bill to play the rescuer from the outside world, one of the “lone crusaders” essential to the American monomyth (Jewett & Lawrence, 1988, p. 178). This rescuer is characterized by “disguised origins, pure motivations, a redemptive task, and extraordinary powers” (Jewett & Lawrence, 1988, p. 195). This matches up nicely with Hamilton. His origins aren’t exactly “disguised,” but they are tragic, shameful, and only briefly addressed. As for his motivations, task, and powers, he’s outraged by injustice, prepared to overthrow the monarchy, and able to outpace the fastest and sharpest thinkers.
In the monomyth, this figure arrives in a troubled community, a single vigilante with the ability to end “the siege of paradise” (Jewett & Lawrence, 1988, p. 175). As the audience soon learns, the colonies are indeed under attack. In “My Shot,” Hamilton complains that “They [the
British] tax us relentlessly/Then King George turns around and runs a spending spree/He ain’t ever gonna set his descendants free,” and he loses his temper with loyalist Samuel Seabury, demanding, “Why should a tiny island across the sea regulate the price of tea?” (Hamilton, 2015, HAMILTON’S DRAW 14
“Farmer Refuted”). The British oppress the colonies, and Hamilton, quick-witted and violently angry, is ready to stop them.
But in the American monomyth, the community under attack is an “Eden” or “paradise,” a perfect place that only “becomes a wilderness” when “evil is ascendant” (Jewett & Lawrence,
1988, p. 175). History buffs will find this an odd description of the American colonies. While colonizers often saw them as a fresh start, certainly a kind of Eden, it was a nightmare for native peoples, slaves, and indentured servants, to name just a few groups. Does Hamilton complete this aspect of the monomyth by depicting the American colonies as a would-be utopia, if not for those pesky British?
Certainly, at first. Hamilton considers the colonies his chance to “be a new man”
(“Alexander Hamilton”), and while he and Laurens do decry slavery as one of the colonies’ key faults (“My Shot”), the British remain the largest threat. This is most clear at the end of act one:
“Yorktown,” the song in which the king’s troops are finally defeated, rings with the joy of a people freed from tyranny, looking forward to a bright future. Sure that the revolution will spread, Lafayette cries, “Freedom for America/freedom for France!” followed by a chorus of
“We won!” to end the act. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that the British were not, or at least no longer are, Eden’s sole threat. Now, the threat comes from within.
In “What’d I Miss?” Thomas Jefferson arrives from France to help build a new government in complete opposition to Hamilton’s vision. He and his peer James Madison argue with Hamilton over and over, eventually teaming up with Burr to end their rival’s career. These enemies never completely defeat Hamilton; in the end, even Jefferson admits that “his financial system is a/work of genius. I couldn’t undo it if I tried,/and I tried” (Hamilton, 2015, “Who
Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”). Even so, Hamilton’s enemies outlive him, and Eden HAMILTON’S DRAW 15 is never restored, if it existed in the first place; although he leaves a legacy, Hamilton dies unable to complete his vision of a perfect nation, leaving the U.S. in political turmoil.
In fact, Hamilton’s death is a complete departure from the American monomyth. Thanks to the popularity of serialized media in the 1930s, a formative time in the monomyth’s development, a hero’s story doesn’t end. If the lone vigilante dies or rides “with his bride into the golden sunset, it would entail devising a new redeemer figure for the next episode” (Jewett &
Lawrence, 1988, p. 186). For the musical to adhere more closely to the monomyth, it would conclude with the end of act one, at which point Hamilton’s fate is ambiguous and the story could be picked up later. But a musical doesn’t need to be serialized; it can tell a story to its completion. Hamilton can die.
And Hamilton dies unable to defend Eden – again, if it ever was Eden in the first place – from a second wave of evil. Where did this inability come from? While the first act stays close to the American monomyth, ending with the hero’s success, the second act subverts the monomyth by revealing the consequences of that hero’s actions. In the first song of act two, Burr and the ensemble ask Hamilton, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?/Write day and night like you’re running out of time?/Every day you fight like you’re running out of time!”
(Hamilton, 2015, “Non-Stop”). Throughout the remaining action, Hamilton works himself to exhaustion. Eventually, when “someone under stress meets someone looking pretty,” Hamilton begins an affair with the married Maria Reynolds (“Say No To This”), enabling his political rivals to blackmail him (“We Know”) until he panics and ruins his own political career
(“Hurricane,” “The Reynolds Pamphlet”). If he’d taken a break from his work defending his
Edenic vision, he may never have begun the affair in the first place, and he may have gone on to the presidency. The key to his heroism was the key to his failure. HAMILTON’S DRAW 16
This is an evolution of the American monomyth, one that twists the myth slightly to tell a half-familiar, half-new narrative. Its twists may hint at ways American expectations for stories have changed over time; for instance, its use of a bittersweet ending may appeal to modern audiences the way happy endings appealed to audiences of the past. In any case, it contains many of the tropes familiar to American audiences but innovates enough to shock and impress. New versions of the monomyth may continue to appear in popular culture, and critics would be wise to observe the relationship between what has changed in the monomyth and the popularity of the new version. If the new narrative functions like Hamilton, it will be close to the tropes in which
Americans already see fidelity and coherence, but it will go out of its way to subvert those tropes while sustaining that connection with the audience.
How does the presentation of Hamilton reinforce this spin on the American monomyth?
Being an innovative, rap-based musical, it is free to employ repetition and duration to warp the historical fact – the story – into a narrative that appeals to audiences. In an excellent example of duration, the first song, “Alexander Hamilton,” is four minutes long, but it covers years of
Hamilton’s life. It tells the audience that “his father split” and abandoned his family, that when he and his mother got sick, “Alex got better but his mother went quick,” that he “moved in with a cousin” until “the cousin committed suicide,” that as a teenager he was given work “in charge of a trading charter,” and that finally, fellow islanders “took up a collection just to send him to the mainland.” All these events, representing years of work and pain in Hamilton’s life, are condensed into a single song and take place offstage. Why? These events provide context for the narrative, setting the audience up to meet the protagonist and accept him as the lone hero. But the events themselves aren’t part of the monomythic narrative. One song is the perfect means to HAMILTON’S DRAW 17 convey the key events in Hamilton’s life both meaningfully and briefly so the narrative can begin.
On the other hand, “The World Was Wide Enough” is the second-to-last song and focuses on the duel in which Burr kills Hamilton. This is the story’s climax. So, in the time between Burr firing his gun and the bullet hitting Hamilton, time slows. The characters freeze. There is no music, a stark departure from the rest of the show, making this moment stand out. Hamilton speaks, rapping abstractly, thinking out loud: “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory…I see it coming. Do I run or fire my gun or let it be?” (Hamilton, “The World Was
Wide Enough,” 2015).
At this point, the audience is given complete access to Hamilton’s decision not to shoot Burr and his thoughts about his own life. He wonders what others will think and do when he’s dead, asking, “If I throw away my shot, is this how you’ll remember me?” and wishing for his wife to
“take your time/I’ll see you on the other side.” His final thoughts about his life, his legacy, and the people he loves unite several themes from the show. They also reinforce this narrative’s departure from the monomyth: the circumstances under which the hero fails and dies. It makes sense for the narrative to stretch this event, actually the length of a gunshot, into several minutes of reflection. And the narrative’s musical format allows this moment without music to stand alone against all other action, while Hamilton’s rapping slows and becomes somber to set the tone. These traits increase narrative coherence by making the sudden somberness and quiet seem deliberate and appropriate rather than accidental or random.
Its musical format also allows the show to repeat key ideas and reinforce their meaning.
When Hamilton, preparing to die, wonders about the consequences of throwing away his shot, the phrase is familiar to the audience. Throughout the show, Hamilton uses “throwing away my HAMILTON’S DRAW 18 shot” to mean giving up his chance to succeed, something he adamantly refuses to do. Most notably for the audience, “I am not throwing away my shot” is the chorus of, well, “My Shot,” but that phrase and its accompanying tune reappears in “Right-Hand Man,” “Yorktown,” and
“Non-Stop” – all songs in which Hamilton seizes an opportunity for power and glory. But in his final moments, he lets go of the opportunity to kill his most bitter rival: he fires into the sky, not at Burr. Hamilton’s constant refusal to miss a chance makes this moment exceptionally strange and meaningful to the audience.
On the other hand, Burr spends the show defining himself as the kind of man who would miss a chance while waiting for a better one (“Wait For It,” “The Room Where It Happens”). But
Burr takes this chance to shoot and kill Hamilton. Why? Hamilton’s greatest and clearest strength as a monomythic hero, his oft-repeated refusal to turn down an opportunity, is the trait that kills him – because his rival counts on it. Burr is certain that Hamilton will take this chance to kill him, and he vows, “This man will not make an orphan of my daughter” (“The World Was
Wide Enough”). He kills Hamilton before Hamilton can kill him – even though, at the last moment, in a bitter twist, Hamilton does the unthinkable, something completely antithetical to his monomythic gift: he throws away his shot.
It’s not only the twists on the monomythic narrative that grip audiences; it’s their delivery. By repeating and altering the duration of events, the narrative crafted in Hamilton reinforces its connections to and deviations from the American monomyth, in turn reinforcing its fidelity and coherence for the audience. Popular narratives in the future, especially those riffing on the American monomyth, will likely employ devices like duration and repetition to alter the story in a way that increases the audience’s investment in the narrative.
HAMILTON’S DRAW 19
Conclusion
Hamilton both adheres to and innovates the American monomyth, altering it while maintaining its fidelity and coherence. Its musical format, especially its use of rap, allows the narrative to warp the story in service of this goal. Do all viral phenomena do this? Absolutely not. For one thing, the most popular topic of the day isn’t always a narrative, and when it is, it’s not always a rapping musical or a version of the American monomyth. But when the next big thing – a song, TV show, commercial, shoe brand, or reality TV star – does carry a narrative, scholars can compare it to other popular narratives to understand what characteristics win over contemporary audiences. Does its appeal depend on some of the properties scholars like Genette have already pointed out? Or does its popularity rest on a trait that theorists have never considered? In short, by studying popular artifacts in the manner of this paper, theorists can gain valuable insight into the narrative characteristics audiences want to see.
So, to answer our final question, why does everyone care about Hamilton right now?
Because Hamilton recounts familiar events in an unfamiliar way. Audiences are drawn by the narratives they already believe and love, those of the country’s founding and the American monomyth. But their interest lies in the changes to those established and trusted narratives, the new presentation and ending. As Washington warns Hamilton, one’s legacy is defined by “who lives, who dies, who tells your story” (“History Has Its Eyes On You”). The threat live; the hero dies; and the people erased from the original events, people of color, present a narrative in their own genre that imbues new meaning. That’s Hamilton’s draw: it rewrites the story. HAMILTON’S DRAW 20
References
Various artists. (2015). Hamilton (original Broadway cast recording) [MP3]. Lin-Manuel
Miranda. New York; Hamilton Uptown, LLC.
Carp, B. L. (2017). World wide enough: Historiography, imagination, and stagecraft. Journal of
The Early Republic, 37(2), 289-294.
Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral
argument. Communication Monographs, 51(1), 1-22. doi:10.1080/03637758409390180
Freeman, J. B. (2017). Will the real Alexander Hamilton please stand up?. Journal of The Early
Republic, 37(2), 255-262.
Genette, G. (1980). Narrative discourse (J. E. Lewin, Trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press. (Original work published 1972)
Healy, P. (2015, Aug 1). 'Hamilton' and the republican hopefuls. New York Times.
Isenberg, N. (2017). "Make 'em laugh": Why history cannot be reduced to song and dance.
Journal of The Early Republic, 37(2), 295-303.
Jewett, R., & Lawrence, J. S. (1988). The American monomyth (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD:
University Press of America.
McAllister, M. (2017). Toward a more perfect Hamilton. Journal of The Early Republic, 37(2),
279-288.
McCraw, T. K. (1994). The strategic vision of Alexander Hamilton. American Scholar, 63(1),
31-57.
Owen, K. (2017). Can great art also be great history?. Independent Review, 21(4), 509-517.
Tommasini, A., & Caramanica, J. (2015, Aug 30). Hip-hop, steeped in heritage. New York Times HAMILTON’S DRAW 21
Retrieved from
https://ezproxy.app.willamette.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/17080
40695?accountid=15051