Hamilton: An American Musical By Lin-Manuel Miranda

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Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda is packed full of diverse themes executed in the most subtle of ways, mesmerizing audiences since 2015. Within these subtleties, we can find various motifs, or repeating lines within the musical often used to imply the existence of themes. One of these motifs is the line “Wait for it”, used in multiple songs from the beginning of the musical right until the end. This motif is used to imply the existence of time. The theme of time in the Hamilton: An American Musical is crafted through the use of the motif “Wait for it” which changes through the musical as it goes from a harmless ideology shared between peers into a taunt, and then later into an ominous message of time. The first time “Wait …show more content…

Our song “The Room Where It Happens” is from Burr's point of view and his outside opinion of Hamilton being the one allowed into the room. Burr calls Hamilton out for taking more than he gave in the meeting with Madison and Jefferson, and in response Hamilton tells Burr “You get nothing if you wait for it”(Miranda, 189). This continues the previous establishment of Hamilton being the type of man to snatch up his chance while Burr continues to wait for his chance instead. Yet, we see the shift in Burr after Hamilton says this and he fully declares, “I wanna be in the room where it happens”(Miranda, 188), finally realizing his own ambitions and realizing his need to directly compete against Hamilton’s overflowing ambition. Hamilton still views time as a competitor, while Burr finally realizes that he has to fight against the natural order of time if he really wants to get the power he desires. Lin-Manuel Miranda uses this song to establish the shift in the timely atmosphere as the musical comes closer and closer to the end. He does this once again in the song Hurricane'', sung by Hamilton after he receives the letter from James Reynolds after his affair with his wife, Maria Reynolds and is confronted by the Southern …show more content…

While Eliza is singing about what she was able to achieve after Hamilton’s death, the continuing chorus is the repetition of the word “time” (Miranda, 281). Time has finally caught up to Hamilton in his death, but the important part of this line is now Eliza is competing against time to secure Alexander Hamilton's legacy after the clock chimed in for his death. In the end, this all worked as Hamilton’s story has outlasted time and made it to the 21st

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