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Act 2: Stay Alive (Reprise)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hamilton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Collaboration, Disagreement, and Democracy
Stories vs. History
Ambition and Mortality
Immigration and Diversity of Influence
Honor
Summary
Analysis
“It’s Quiet Uptown,” sung by Angelica and the ensemble, follows the Hamiltons as they move uptown and try to adjust to a world without Philip in it. Then Hamilton joins in, narrating mundane routine in a way he never has before: “I spend hours in the garden / I walk alone to the store / and it’s quiet uptown / I never liked the quiet before.”
For all of its runtime thus far, Hamilton has operated on the scale of national history. Here, the show slows down to capture Hamilton’s daily life in all its mundane routine. After all, why does the future matter if the present is so unbearable? How can anyone find the language or the concepts to get through such grief? If ambition is driven by a sense of mortality, what happens when the person who dies is not oneself but one’s beloved son?
Themes
Hamilton also apologizes to Eliza, expressing that if he could trade his life for Philip’s, he would. The song ends when Eliza takes Hamilton’s hand. “Forgiveness,” the company sings, and as the lights go down, the ensemble reminds the audience that “they are going through the unimaginable.”
Compromise and patience have been essential values throughout all of the political dealings in the show. Now, in a beautiful moment, “forgiveness” becomes the bedrock of marriage as well: Hamilton and Eliza can only get through the “unimaginable” if they get through it together, faults and all. And by not filling in the gaps of the “unimaginable,” the company reminds us of the personal, intimate pain and joy that history fails to capture.
Themes
