I just feel like we're not talking enough about the pro-labor, pro-union, themes in Hadestown. My boy Orpheus is literally wearing a red bandana. He said you simply have to stand up, together, even when it's terrifying and you have never done it before. There are more of us than them. Even if it seems impossible we have hope, because we are standing in solidarity. You can only make demands of gods if you have your union behind you. And then you realise they aren't gods, and you can bargain.
Also, I dont think I have the exact words to fully make the connection rn but there is connection - the workers are often referred to interchangeably with the wall/the river styx
"A million tons of stone and steel echoed his refrain" - turning into the workers grunting leading directly into If Its True. I think also from that bit "but everyone knows that walls have ears, and the workers heard him".
"I sang a song so beautiful the stones wept and they let me in"
"I hear the walls repeating the falling of my feet and it sounds like drumming i am not alone I hear the rocks and stones echoing my song"
"Theres a crack in the wall" - theres a disloyalty in the workers, someone let Orpheus in. The whole stage opens up like a cracking wall when he enters Hadestown.
"The river styx is a river of stone and Hades build it high and thick with a million hands that are not his own" the work belongs to the workers they are synonymous it is their work not Hades'
