The Depth of Hadestown: Part 1

Hadestown is a musical written by Anais Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin. It’s a retelling of the tragic story of Orpheus and Eurydice from greek mythology. The musical follows Orpheus, the son of a muse, who is naive to the ways of the world and his lover, Euryidce. In the musical, the mortals are starving because the seasons are not changing. This is due to Persephone not coming up to the top on time and she leaves to early. This leads us to the other main characters, Persephone and Hades. Persephone is the goddess that causes the season to change when she comes back up for half of the year, but in the musical, she has not been coming as much. Why? Well, it’s because Hades is keeping her in the underworld with him. Hades, as many of yall probally know, is the god of the Underworld. In Hadestown, he owns a world underground named “Hadestown”. Our last main role in the show is Hermes, who acts as both a character and a narrator.

Ok, enough recap. If you want to know more about the plot, do a quick google search. Now, i’m going to talk about the symbolism in this musical.

The whole musical has critiques of Capitalism all throughout. The famine and weariness in the upperworld is contrasted by the supposed stability, control, and order in Hadestown. Mitchell uses these contrasting places as parallels of our world. For example, Eurydice choses to go the underworld, but in the original myth, she is forcibly sent there. This change was intentional and vital the symbolism. Eurydice choses to leave the upperworld because of the instability. She is promised food and security in Hadestown. But little does she know, Hadestown isn’t as glamorous as it sounds. She now has security, safety, and she has food, but she loses her free will. She is forced to work in Hades’s factory until she forget herself and her lover, Orpheus. This whole situation is an exact critique of our capitalist society. In “Way Down Hadestown Reprise”, the fates tell Euyrdice, “Mr. Hades set you free, to work yourself into the ground. Free to spend eternity, in the factory, in the warehouse”. We are Eurydice. We are being worked to death. We choose to break our backs in the factory, not because we want to, but because we have no other option. We want food and security just as much as Euyrdice wanted them. If we don’t work ourselves into the ground, what happens then? Well, just look around. We wouldn’t have somewhere to sleep, we wouldn’t have food, and we wouldn’t have stability. Our capitalist society is indirectly forcing us to choose what Eurydice chose.

Anais Mitchell made the choice of changing the myth for this exact purpose. She wanted to criticize our society, and thats part of why people love this musical. It is not afraid to speak the truth.

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Thats the end of the first part of this series where I reveal the depth and symbolism in Hadestown. Please follow if you enjoyed this. Thank you so much!