Cultural Impact
By developing the characters of historic assassins out of the slim biographical information found in the daily news, Assassins prompts us to consider their motivation. "(Sondheim) confronts pain in order to cauterize the decay and heal the sicknesses which lurk at the core of our society". Departing from the humanism of his previous musical Into the Woods, Sondheim suggests that political murderers are a product of the American political culture (Joanne Gordon).
Historian and commentator Sarah Vowell introduced her 2005 analysis of the Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield murders, Assassination Vacation, with a journey from New York City into New England to attend a performance of Assassins, the musical prompting her writing of the book (Vowell 2005).
Read more about this topic: Assassins (musical)
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