Discuss the ways in which Arthur Miller uses the characters of Alfieri to highlight cultural differences and to develop the audience’s understanding of theme, character and plot.
in ‘A View from The Bridge’ Arthur Miller uses a character called Alfieri to introduce characters, the plot and theme of the story. He makes us aware of the cultural differences between American and Italian culture through his opinions. Alfieri is an Italian American meaning he was born in Italy and immigrated to American to work. He works as a lawyer; from this we can immediately tell he is educated and very wise. He is a man of his 50’s and in this story, not only does he play the role of a character, but also a narrator. ‘A view from the Bridge’ is about the movement of immigrants migrating from Italy to America. They moved because of the ‘American Dream’s which was people from other countries going to America to start a new life and earn a good living full of opportunities. The Italian migration happened mainly between 1820-1920. More than 4 million Italian people moved to America. The immigration law changed in 1921-1924. This law only allowed people from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia to migrate to America. This resulted to illegal immigration.
This play is set near Brooklyn Bridge and Arthur Miller uses a metaphor to describe the whereabouts of where they live. He uses the word “Gullet”. This creates an atmosphere and we can tell that the area they live in is not pleasant Italian culture differ from American culture and in Alfieri’s first speech, he introduces the background information of Italians. Unlike Americans, Italians would hardly ask a lawyer for help. This is because they are only considered as connections with disasters. Although Italians are quite honest and trustworthy, they are very revengeful as well. They take situations into their own hands and deal with themselves. The Italians are settling into America and are settling for half but the two cultures remain diverse. Alfieri uses words like distrust, law and justice many times. This tells us that those words are very important in the play and the theme may be based around those words. I think that Arthur Miller used these words because the Italians are very rarely distrusted and the law is not a popular thing, therefore the cultural differences and the characters can be spotted in this play. Alfieri understands both Italian and American culture and can conclude in his last speech how he feels about Eddie and what he has done. From the beginning of the play, we can tell that this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending and Alfieri tells us that in his introduction and that there was nothing he could do about it. He says “…and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course.”
