Hopelessness and Some Hope: Mythical Arcs and Archetypes in Hadestown

ABSTRACT: The most recent Broadway version of the musical Hadestown , by Anaïs Mitchell touches on our endangered environment, willful despots, exploited workers, the morbidities of late capitalism, and more. We consider how traditional elements, their archetypal patterns and mythic arcs, plus psychological substrata, are used, expanded, or discounted in Hadestown , illuminating hidden potentials, exposing seeds for radical retellings. Hadestown reflects the multifold Classical accounts of Hades and Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice with their tensions between life, death and rebirth, obedience and rebellion, hope and despair, most radically as Persephone rebels against Hades, the Fates are hostile, and Eurydice abandons Orpheus. Just as the myth of Persephone and Demeter finds hopeful resolution in the establishment of the Eleusinian mysteries and Orpheus' myths promote Orphic views of love and salvation, Hadestown promulgates its own ritual in its nightly reiteration of these tragic stories which, nevertheless, allows us to imagine the possibility (with struggle) of different, better futures.