Choose One Song From Hamilton (Disney+) And Construct A Spec ✓ Solved

Choose ONE song from Hamilton (Disney+) and construct a spec

Choose ONE song from Hamilton (Disney+) and construct a specific argument that analyzes how the song addresses performativity or personas and to what purpose. Use Hamilton as the primary text and at least two reputable secondary sources. Think critically about the primary text and develop an original argument supported by evidence, synthesizing secondary materials to participate in a critical conversation about how pop culture comments on performativity (the relationship between word and action) and personas (the public image or social role one adopts), and how these relate to larger social issues such as race, class, sexuality, and gender.

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Introduction

The closing number, "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story," functions as a meta-commentary on legacy, authorship, and the performance of public memory in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton (Kail). This song stages a confrontation between historical record and lived reality: it asks who has the authority to shape narratives and how acts of remembering are themselves performative. By focusing on Eliza Schuyler Hamilton's work preserving Alexander Hamilton's papers and founding an orphanage, the song reframes agency away from masculine political self-fashioning toward domestic labor as a form of historical authorship. I argue that the song critiques conventional personas of political greatness by insisting that performative acts of care and archival labor are central to who is remembered—thus linking persona, performativity, and larger issues of race and class in the production of national memory.

Performative Acts and Competing Personas

Judith Butler’s theory of performativity—where identity is constituted through repeated acts—helps illuminate how Hamilton represents historical actors as constructed through both public rhetoric and embodied labor (Butler). Alexander Hamilton’s public persona is manufactured through rhetoric, ambition, and political performance: his speeches, pamphlets, and duel (mirrored onstage by rapid lyricism and bravado) create a self-fashioning that demands recognition. In contrast, Eliza’s persona is established through ongoing acts of preservation: she edits papers, runs an orphanage, and continuously speaks Hamilton’s name. These forms of action reveal Butler’s insight that identity and legacy are produced through repeated practices, not solely innate traits.

Presentation of Self: Public vs. Private Labor

Erving Goffman’s framework on the presentation of self helps distinguish the theatricality of political persona from quieter, often gendered, forms of labor that also perform identity (Goffman). Alexander’s front-stage political gestures win headlines; Eliza’s back-stage archival work secures the story that reaches posterity. The song literalizes this by juxtaposing the grand public performances celebrated throughout the musical with Eliza’s persistent, unglamorous memorial work. In doing so, Hamilton reframes archival caretaking as political performance, thus expanding the definition of who can author history.

Archive, Repertoire, and Cultural Memory

Diana Taylor’s distinction between the archive and the repertoire is useful here: archives (papers, documents) and repertoires (embodied practice and performance) together sustain cultural memory (Taylor). Eliza’s labors encompass both: she curates an archive (saving letters) and embodies repertoire through storytelling and public charity. The song calls attention to how memory depends on both media—documents and continual enactments. Furthermore, Miranda’s staging (and the Disney+ cast recording) itself participates in this interplay, using modern musical forms to reperform and thereby reauthorize historical narratives (Miranda; Kail).

Race, Class, and the Politics of Who Tells the Story

Hamilton’s casting and musical language deliberately foreground Black and Latinx performers in roles of founding fathers—a choice that reconfigures the racial persona of American origin stories. Yet the final song complicates that gesture: while casting democratizes visibility, the question of who controls textual archives persists. Ron Chernow’s biography, which inspired Miranda, helped determine the contours of the musical’s narrative by providing source materials and interpretations (Chernow). The musical thus demonstrates that even progressive representational moves are mediated by which texts are preserved and who curates them. The song suggests that working-class and domestic labor—often performed by women and people of color historically—are decisive in what survives as canonical history.

Eliza’s Counter-Performance and Moral Authority

By centering Eliza’s voice in the finale, Miranda stages a counter-performance: moral authority is reclaimed by caregiving and quiet perseverance. The song’s refrain—“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”—compels listeners to see storytelling itself as a civic act. Eliza’s founding of an orphanage and her editorial interventions enact a long-term political performance that challenges the ostensible grandeur of Hamilton’s public persona. This inversion resonates with Stuart Hall’s ideas about representation and the politics of meaning: representation is not neutral; it is constituted by power and practice (Hall). Hamilton implies that representation is contested and that the marginalized work of memory-making exerts power in shaping collective identity.

Conclusion

"Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story" reframes performativity and persona by insisting that legibility in history depends as much on everyday acts of care and archival labor as on conspicuous political performance. Drawing on Butler and Goffman to conceptualize performative identity, and Taylor and Hall to situate memory practices, the song critiques traditional assumptions about authorship and fame. It also prompts audiences to interrogate contemporary cultural production—who records our stories, whose voices are amplified, and how race and class influence the archival process. Ultimately, Hamilton’s finale performs a democratic argument: the telling of history is itself a political performance, and recognizing those who labor to tell it expands our sense of who deserves to be remembered.

References

  • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
  • Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.
  • Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Duke University Press, 2003.
  • Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, pp. 222–237.
  • Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. Penguin Press, 2004.
  • Miranda, Lin‑Manuel, and Jeremy McCarter. Hamilton: The Revolution. Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
  • Miranda, Lin‑Manuel. Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording). Atlantic Records, 2015.
  • Kail, Thomas, director. Hamilton. Disney+, 2020 (filmed stage production).
  • Brantley, Ben. Review of Hamilton. The New York Times, 2015.
  • NPR. Interview with Lin‑Manuel Miranda. Representative interviews and coverage on Fresh Air and NPR Arts, 2015–2016.

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