My younger daughter is obsessed with Hamilton, the modern musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda about the “founding father without a father” Alexander Hamilton. Nonstop I hear it in my house, both in recordings and on her lips.
It started with my older daughter a couple years ago when she began middle school. She still loves the musical, but now my younger child is the most vocal super-fan, reciting the words rapid-fire on the playground with a few other Hamilton-adoring kids. She said she learned to sing better from this effort. She spent her special spending money ordering (with my help) two Hamilton t-shirts online. So yeah, it’s big around here.
There are some fringe benefits. I, too, love the mashup of hip-hop, R&B, pop, jazz, soul, big band, and show tunes-style music. Inspired by the show, I’ve learned more about foundation of the national bank. Both of my kids have aced a few history projects thanks to the energy generated by this musical track.
Now that my daughters have exposed me to enough of the musical that I’ve memorized my fair share of songs. I was lucky enough to see the show live recently. In “the room where it happened”—that is, in the theater —I was even more taken by its dramatic tangle of emotions, ideas, and historical characters, all set to pitch-perfect musical narration.
(Spoiler alert: if you haven’t listened to, seen, or read about Hamilton, and want to be surprised by the show, you may wish to stop here!)
Aaron Burr, the lawyer and politician who was Hamilton’s greatest rival, serves as the show’s narrator, in a sense. In a musical about Hamilton, we expect to hate Burr, but it’s far more nuanced.
We, the audience, come to understand Burr’s point of view. In “Wait for It,” Burr sings “I am the one thing in life I can control.” The whole song is about self-control in the face of whatever life throws at you. Burr, unlike the frenetic, constantly moving Hamilton, is willing to wait for success, to wait for his destiny. (Unfortunately that destiny left him known primarily as Hamilton’s killer and as the loser in a presidential race.)
Burr, like Hamilton, is also keenly aware that death is always lurking, unpredictably, for all of us, no matter our achievements or goodness:
“Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes…”
The vulnerability expressed in this song creates sympathy for a man that you might, otherwise, despise. Burr is thoughtful, emotionally vivid, and very human.
Hamilton, too, is a complex and highly sympathetic character whose biography drives the show forward. His tremendous productivity is motivated by his impending sense of death. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” asks Eliza Hamilton, Alexander’s wife. He’s fixated on the potential for failure before he’s done with his life’s work, before he can make the best use of “his shot.”
Hamilton puts it this way in “The Room Where It Happened”:
“God help and forgive me
I wanna build
Something that’s gonna
Outlive me…”
Hamilton’s character is summed up by the song “Not Throwing Away My Shot.” (Yes, there is a lot of irony there, given his final duel.) His key idea: “Just act.” We cannot wait for someone else to make things right. Instead, we need to take action, and stand up for what we care about. If we do, we might just achieve something lasting.
The script depicts Hamilton’s main critique of Burr as centered around Burr’s lack of core principles. From Hamilton’s perspective, Burr doesn’t “stand for” anything. Political games (and jealousy over lack of access to Washington and power more generally) seem to consume Burr.
Hamilton views Burr as an opportunist and supports another rival, Jefferson, for the presidency because “Jefferson has beliefs, Burr has none.” In the show’s version of events, this friction ultimately leads to the duo’s deadly last dispute.
Hamilton is also the story of a man who destroys himself because he lacks a specific virtue: Self-control.
He’s got courage and a keen sense of justice, but his wisdom fails him in a few important moments and he flairs out of control. The show demonstrates how his infamous extra-marital affair and angry sense of self-justification bring about his undoing in politics and in his personal life. Jefferson and Madison ask: “You ever seen somebody ruin his own life?”
Sucked in by bad passions and insults, guilty over his son’s demise after receiving his unfortunate advice, Hamilton is not able to recover the sense of honor that he has lost. He seems obsessed with proving his own righteousness to others, especially his fiercest rivals. With an almost suicidal intent, he enters the duel with Burr that he doesn’t survive.
Despite Hamilton’s ill-fated end, we can take away a few key ideas to live our own lives better.
- “I’m not throwing away my shot” to pursue a meaningful life. 🔥
- Act on your good intentions now—not in some distant future. 🏃🏻♀️ After all, we don’t know how much time is left, as Hamilton points out. “I imagine death so much it feels like a memory. When’s it going to get me?” he says. “We have to make this moment last.” We must fully engage in the present, and live out our principles as best we can.
- And for a little more inspiration: Figure out what matters to you and why. Then stand up for what you think is right, and give your work your best effort—no matter what others say. To quote Hamilton once more: “You got skin in the game, you stay in the game. But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game. You get love for it, you get hate for it. You get nothing if you wait for it.” 💪
MeredithInk 