Palaces Out Of Paragraphs – Page 6

For this blog I’ve decided to take a closer look at each King George’s three songs “You’ll Be Back,” “What Comes Next?” and “I Know Him” and how each, though sung to the same tune, conveys a different meaning overall.
In “You’ll Be Back,” King George offers the colonists the message that their little rebellion will fail, and warns them in an emotional manner not to betray his love for them. While initially a seemingly romantic account of their relationship, he contrasts this notion both in the song and in reality by “send[ing] a fully armed battalion” to remind the colonists of his love. How beautiful.
“What Comes Next?” gives King George the opportunity to berate the Americans once again by telling them that they will fail a second time. This song depicts yet another emotional response to the situation across the pond, as he spats “You’re on your own / Awesome. Wow” and allows George to retain his position of power, as he is assured that the new country is destined to fail.
“I Know Him” depicts a shift in both the message and position of King George. No longer is George in any position to criticize with the upper hand, as he becomes the weaker party “perplexed” by how Washington is simply going to step down. Of course, he still believes that the Americans are destined to fail, but it is worth arguing that his credibility as an evaluator of the situation is in a way completely irrelevant. Any rational arguments he had in the first two songs have been reduced to bitter bickering from a behind the times king who himself admits that he “wasn’t aware that was something a person could do.” His relevancy and grip on the Americas – be that through military might or fear of failure – no longer exists and thus his necessity, even as a narrator, becomes nonexistent.
Thus, it becomes necessary for King George’s departure, so as it happens in the play.
While listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on Spotify and keeping up with what happens in the musical, I’m impressed with how well it tells a complete and interesting story. Reading and studying history from a textbook can get tiresome, so the fact that Hamilton can tell the story of Hamilton with modern-sounding soundtrack is quite a feat. Miranda’s ability to have the characters personalities and motives shine through in their songs makes the story of Hamilton easy and enjoyable to follow.
I’ve been reading Game of Thrones recently and I can see a lot of similarities to Hamilton with how the stories are told. Both utilize the characters in the story to draw the audience in and get them to care about what happens to the characters and their goals. There is even parallels between the stories in the political sense. Characters clash with each other when their goals conflict and there are big consequences for almost all characters that try to get involved.
The thing that is significant about Hamilton and where I believe it gets a lot of its popularity from is that it tells the story in a form that approachable and already popular for a lot of people today. Hip-Hop has almost taken over the music industry and has so many different forms that nearly anyone can enjoy the soundtrack of Hamilton. It also has a diverse cast which helps attract more attention for being a unique and progressive group of people. All of these things combine to make Hamilton an extremely popular musical that has taken the country’s attention and held it for awhile. The price of tickets to see the musical is evidence enough of that.
As pointed out in “A Singularity in Blue” Hamilton paints a fairly rosy picture of the Founding Fathers. Hamilton’s purpose is more to reframe the narrative of the American Revolution than it is to show an accurate version of the revolutionaries themselves. To this extent, the events and characters of the show should be taken, like anything “based on a true story”, with a grain of salt. Regardless of this, it is inevitable that a certain segment of the audience will take it for granted that Hamilton is completely historically accurate so it is important to pay attention to how characters are portrayed.
One questionable portrayal is that of General Charles Lee (below), who is introduced in “Stay Alive” with the line “I’m a general! Wheeee!”. Lee is presented as not only “inexperienced and ruinous”, but also as childish. Given Lee went on to slander Washington and damage the revolutionary cause, it makes sense that a story told from Hamilton’s perspective would view Lee this way. However, prior to the Battle of Monmouth fiasco, the historical Lee was a successful and well respected general. He was in the running for Washington’s position as Commander in Chief, but was turned down, in part because he wished to be compensated for English property he gave up when he joined rebellion, whereas Washington would work for free. This is clearly not the General Lee we see in Hamilton and it is not made clear whether the character is supposed to be the historical Lee or Lee as seen by Hamilton.
In comparison, the bias of the narrative is made explicit in “Say No to This” where the story is being told solely from Hamilton’s perspective. All of Maria Reynolds’ lines are preceded with an attributive from Hamilton like “she said”. The historical record of the events between Alexander and Maria is based entirely on Hamilton’s version of the events, where he painted Maria as a seductive caricature in order to absolve himself of guilt. It is clear that this is not supposed to represent Maria herself, but the way history views her through the lens of Hamilton’s writing.
While both of these depictions could be considered uncharitable at best, Maria’s characterization never strays into questionable territory because it is explicitly a biased caricature of the actual Maria Reynolds. Lee, on the other hand, is portrayed as a buffoon, without that same explicit purpose. It would be incredibly easy for an audience member to come away viewing the historical Lee as the caricature presented in the show. So, do the creators of a work like Hamilton have a responsibility to accurately and charitably represent historical figures? Are the legacies of the long dead worth protecting at the expense of artistic liberties? For figures like Lee, who is relatively obscure and became disgraced before his death, does it matter if his reputation is further tarnished 200 years later? I can’t answer these questions, but it seems important that they get asked.
I don’t know if I can quite draw a parallel between Hamilton’s relentless pursuit of his work and my experience at Tech. Not that I don’t work hard – I feel like I do at least – but I feel like Hamilton’s life at age 19 differs so much from my own, as well as most other Tech students. For example, when Hamilton was just 20 (ok, maybe 22) he was first appointed as Washington’s aide. I feel like the kind of work that gets a person from where Hamilton started to there is not the kind of work I can possibly parallel with my own.
One thing that had really fascinated me throughout the musical is the fact that all these things (albeit slightly dramatized) are real things that happened. For me, it’s nearly impossible to reconcile the things that go on in the musical to someone’s real life. I think it goes to show how different things are today. In today’s world, I do not believe what Hamilton was able to accomplish at his age would be feasible. Although the age to be a United States Representative is 25 (Hamilton’s age when first on Congress), the youngest person currently a member of the House of Representatives is 33 – nearly 10 years older than Hamilton was. And I’m sure their efforts were relentless to get there.
As I listened and watched Hamilton, part of me considered how little I feel I’ve done compared to Hamilton, and others in the musical, I’ve realized it’s not really fair to compare myself to them. Today is a much different United States than was back then, and Hamilton himself was probably 1 in a million. But still, it’s incredible to learn the extent of what Hamilton was able to accomplish in his brief 47 (or 49) years.
I guess there are some people who you could compare him to – people like Steve Jobs. You know, those guys who are/were so incredibly smart and passionate about what they did that they excel beyond anyone else. So, in that sense, there are parallels that can be drawn between him and more contemporary people – but not your average Tech Student for sure.
Reading through the genius.com annotations of Alexander Hamiltonand researching founding fathers for my historical annotation project, I am surprised at how young some of the founding fathers were when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Hamilton himself was only 21 years old, and Aaron Burr was 20. This has led me to ponder whether the percentage of young ambitious minds who “take their shot” early on in their lives has diminished over the last few centuries. After comparing the accomplishments of Alexander Hamilton and other founding fathers when they were young to the early achievements of highly successful and influential people today, I believe that many successful people today still had much talent and ambition in their youth.
However, it is important to realize that the problems faced by the founding fathers are drastically different than those encountered by the leaders of today. Take, for example, Elon Musk—the founder of SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and many other innovative organizations—at just 28 years of age he became a founding member in PayPal, which is now one of the biggest online payment services in the world. Like Hamilton, Musk had fierce competition from his peers who he did not always see eye to eye with. Musk had to overcome being ousted as CEO due to his desire to switch from the Unix platform to Microsoft. He would go on to create the aforementioned companies.
Another innovator who started young, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, started Amazon as an online book rental service. During the early days of his company, he would deliver books himself. Similarly to Hamilton, Bezos did not have strong familial support when he was young. He had a teen mother who divorced his biological father before giving Jeff up for adoption. Below is a video of Jeff Bezos during the early days of Amazon.
While the leaders of today did not have to fight for independence, they did have to overcome major hurdles in order to establish their vision and impart it on the world.
While listening to the musical “Hamilton”, a rising sophomore at the Georgia Institute of Technology was able to form a relationship between Alexander Hamilton’s uncanny ability to write rapidly, as if he was “running out of time” (“Non-Stop”), and the student’s own ability to progress through a specific midterm, as if he had very little time to waste. One could call this student Habib; however, one could also think of Habib as a procrastinator on the day before his exam, because he waited until he had as little time left as possible to study.
Hamilton’s ability to write and act impulsively ruins the lives of the people, such as Eliza, central to his life. To elaborate, Hamilton does have an affair with Maria Reynolds, the events occurring in “Say No To This”. Eliza discovers the happenings behind this scandalous event in a pamphlet and chooses to erase herself “from the narrative” (“Burn”). Even though Hamilton had gained so much popularity and support from his friends, one mistake was enough to lead to his disastrous end.
After listening to these songs, Habib can only think of the BMED 2210 midterm he had the day before, the one time he woke up and showed up late for his exam, when he had perfect attendance and a high A in the class. He took the test as if he was trying to write his way out of it; he just wanted to go home. A few days later, Habib was woken up to screams from his mother and father, showing him the 70 that he received on his midterm. He came back to Georgia Tech the day after with a feeling of despair, a feeling that he had just ruined his own life (his GPA, in reality), and not necessarily the lives of the people around him.
But like Hamilton, Habib was always a man of willpower, so he knew that one single midterm was not going to let him get in the way of three more years of potential success, and a diploma he wanted to hold in his hands in 2021. Likewise, Habib thought of Hamilton’s dreams of rising from the bottom, rising from a world of apparent failure to success and support.
Even after the death of Phillip, Eliza forgave Hamilton (“It’s Quiet Uptown”), because Hamilton was regretful for his actions, for the one time that the story he wrote for himself was not perfect. Habib took inspiration from this story, and connected it to his present state; he was confident that his parents would forgive him, and that he would forgive himself if he did better on his next midterm. So Habib, like Hamilton, decided to take his failure as a lesson, improve his writing skills, build a stronger relationship with the time he has, and move on to a better place.
Habib used the experiences of Alexander Hamilton, related them to his own life, and chose the path of greater success!
I believe that his many of Hamilton’s missteps throughout the musical are caused by Hamilton’s inability to step out of himself and examine his own impulses. Miranda’s protagonist shows ambition in almost every song of the play, but this determination causes him to be blind to the desires of other people. Impulsiveness undercuts his morality, and the most stark example of this in the musical is the moment Hamilton sleeps with a woman who is not his wife.
The callback to “Helpless” in both the song “Satisfied” and the song “Say No to This” leaves the audience with a sense that Hamilton only makes major decisions concerning women completely based on what is most convenient for himself at the time. The first time we hear the tune and idea of “Helpless”, we see Hamilton and Eliza falling in love. The second time comes immediately after the first, as the song “Satisfied” undercuts the magic of the moment by providing a complete juxtaposition to the initial perspective. Although Angelica is shown to be Hamilton’s intellectual equal, he chooses to be with Eliza because she is more appealing to him in the moment. As the story is retold from Angelica’s perspective, we get the feeling that Angelica is omnipotent and that Hamilton makes a mistake by making a decision so quickly. Another callback to “Helpless” returns when Hamilton meets Maria Reynolds, leading the audience to understand that Hamilton makes the decision on the same impulse that led him to marry Eliza. Hamilton cannot acknowledge that he must make the decision to sacrifice short term happiness for long term fulfillment, and this stubborn ignorance ultimately causes his early demise.
His affair with Maria Reynolds was the ultimate example of his constant desire for instant gratification and proved how willingly he would sacrifice the love of his family for short term happiness. Even if he had not had sex with Maria, the fact that he wasn’t wary of her upon her first fliration shows that he is not able to deny his impulsive wants. Hamilton’s personality dictated his fate with Maria long before he met her, although he cannot declare the fault to be his own. In the song “Say No to This”, Hamilton displaces his own agency and removes the blame from himself by placing it onto the woman, another decision that makes his life more convenient for himself by sacrificing the good of someone else. He even displaces his own agency during the song by asking for divine interference to get him out of the situation, as if he cannot control himself so God must show him the answer.
In “Burn”, Eliza finally addresses Hamilton’s major faults. She addresses that fact that Hamilton’s decisions are often driven by his desire for instant gratification; she tells him he’s “obsessed with [his] legacy”. This obsession causes him to choose glory over his family and often over decisions that would have more lasting effects on American history. Eliza tells him for the first time about a doubt placed into her mind by her sister back in 1781, again reiterating the idea that Angelica has been omnipotent throughout the musical. Eliza kicks him out of their bed, a symbol for their marriage, after telling him how betrayed she felt when she found out another girl had slept in their bed. This is our first example of a punishment for Hamilton’s lack of empathy and foresight where Hamilton sees no easy way out. She finally burns all the letters, which is a permanent decision that she makes to destroy all of Hamilton’s buttery words and force his name to be tied with the affair instead of their loving marriage.
Nevertheless, had Hamilton had more time, he probably would have thought better of making such impulsive decisions in his relationships with women. Carrie Underwood says it better than I can:
For this blog post, I want to give my overall opinion of Hamilton himself and the show depicting his life and experiences all the way to his death. I enjoyed hearing his life story and the progression of how he slowly rose to becoming a man of power. It kind of reminded me of myself and how I was put in life situations as a kid that most people wouldn’t be able to overcome. Now that I am where I am at, which would be a place of power to me, I can definitely relate with what Hamilton had to go through to become one of the nation’s founding fathers. As far as the musical goes, I wasn’t too fond of it. Overall I find musicals to be a little on the cheesy side so off the bat I wasn’t really a big fan of the show. Also I don’t agree with the musical being seen as a Hip Hop musical. I am a big fan of Hip Hop and in my opinion I feel like the music in the show was a corny rip off of Hip Hop. The messages in the songs were clear and went well with the story, but the music in itself I didn’t like at all. I also didn’t agree with idea of making most of the historical figures African American when in real life they were white. It might seem petty for me saying this, but I feel like the point of the show is to entertain and also educate the audience. Changing the race of characters could lead some of the audience to think that these people could of actually been people of color when in reality they weren’t. I really didn’t understand the reasoning for switching the races; maybe so it would resemble more of a ‘Hip Hop’ feel, but I didn’t agree with it.
After reading one of the “Singularity in Blue” posts about the musical Hamilton, I came to a better understanding of the little details Lin-Manuel Miranda decided to put in the musical that actually determine the purpose of the musical. The writer of the blog, Evelyna, stresses that never have racial minorities stepped into spotlight, and now that they are coming into spotlight, those watching are not very pleased. She also mentions that a lot of people end up fantasizing about the founding fathers after watching this musical, when the founding father were not people to be fantasized about, in terms of racial equality support.
Evelyna says that Hamilton, “Hamilton is not really about the founding fathers. It’s not really about the American Revolution. The revolution, and Hamilton’s life are the narrative subject,” and explains that the purpose of the musical is to accurately portray the characteristic of the nation, even though we know the founding fathers were all Caucasian. While technically, the majority of the nation has become minorities, Evelyna says this “majority” are pretty inconsequential to the nation’s history. One thing she said that i felt very relatable was that if you are a minority, “You learn about yourself as entirely shaped by outside forces,” which imply that not much impact on the nation’s history until a major event, like the Civil Rights Movement, appeared. Even when events like this rose to the surface, there were tons of opposing sides, talking about assimilation and getting over issues that denounce people of color as less than human beings like themselves.
People of color have ever been the main. Although we are nothing different from the white people, we are always treated differently and with less respect. To accurately show this nation’s composition, Lin-Manuel Miranda makes the important founding fathers people of color. Evenlyna says that, “Hamilton depicts the revolution of which America is proud as one led by people of colour against a white ruling body,” which was a lot like the fights for racial equality. This clearly explains that our fight is no different from the colonies breaking fighting for their rights against Britain during the Revolution.
This article reminds me of my rights as a human being and encourages me to not cut myself off as an outsider just because I am not an American born. America is a nation of the melting pot after all and I am part of that melting pot, therefore, proud to say that I am an American.
During their duel, Hamilton and Burr both acted opposite to their character that was portrayed in the show. In the very beginnings of the musical, Lin Manuel characterizes Hamilton as being an extremely ambitious man, taking his”shot” at all times. He never wasted an opportunity and always seemed to go out and accomplish whatever he wanted. This character trait could be expressed using many different words. Ambitious, took every chance, aggressive, determined, all words that Lin Manuel could have chosen to describe Hamilton but instead he chose “My Shot”. This choice was clearly not done by chance. I believe that Lin Manuel chose this terminology to point towards the irony present in the duel, that while all his life he did take his “shots”, when his life was on the line he wasted his last shot, firing his weapon into the air. In fact during the song, “The World Was Wide Enough”, Hamilton’s hesitation in the dueling moment was expressed in his monologue, “I see it coming, do I run or fire my gun or let it be?“.
Similarly, Burr was described early in the musical through the song “Wait for it”. Burr throughout the musical hesitated at everything he did, growing a little to be more direct towards the end of the show by taking Schuyler’s congressional chair and running for the presidency. In the duel when it counted, Burr did not wait, he took his shot and killed Hamilton. Although Burr did not die, killing Hamilton was the death of Burr in every other sense of the word publicly. Once he fired his shot in the song “The World Was Wide Enough”, Lin Manuel alludes to “Wait for it” in a very simple line spoken by Burr after it was to late, “Wait!“.
When Burr and Hamilton acted outside of their character it cost them greatly. Burr took his “shot” and Hamilton “waited” to see his fate, putting it in Burr’s hands. Lin Manuel depicts this irony by constantly emphasizing their well-established characters throughout the musical and then showing their final contradictory actions.
Why would they act against their character? I don’t think they necessarily acted against their character, I think that their actions during the duel revealed their true character. Throughout their lives, Burr and Hamilton are constantly building a public image, trying to create their own “Legacy“. Everything they did was influenced by how others would view them, not necessarily revealing their true intentions. But when their lives were on the line, Burr cowardly broke the code of honor established in Duels of the time (firing in the air) while Hamilton still upheld it. The constant embellishment of their characters in the public realm ceased during the duel, finally revealing the truth of their characters. It seems Hamilton was right when he wrote, “Mr Burr loves nothing but himself.”(https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/t-00496-028.pdf). While Burr was right when He complained of Burr’s honesty,” Why do you always say what you believe?”