Justice generally, in Eddie’s community, is not handed out by the courts but by the people who feel wronged. Marco puts this into words when he says ‘All the law is not in a book’. The immigrant community doesn’t like the New World ways of categorising things and acting on evidence rather than feelings. They feel that this lets people get away with things they shouldn’t do, and they like to have punishments for those who do morally wrong not just legally wrong.
Another important value to those who abide by the Sicilian codes is always wanting better for your children than you had and being very protective of them. This is another way we see the importance of family in the immigrant community. Eddie shows his protectiveness of Catherine right from the start, when he says ‘I think it’s too short, ain’t it’ about Catherine’s skirt. He does not wish his niece to be thought of as a loose woman. Also, he emphasises the traditional wish for each generation to do better for themselves by saying, ‘I want you to be with different kind of people’. In the business of being protective Eddie treats Catherine like his own daughter, though he is not a blood relative of her, as would any honourable man in the Sicilian community.
The protectiveness is also important in the context of looking after the whole family and the men being the leaders and the breadwinners. This is a very macho society where women are dominated by their husbands and fathers. Eddie demonstrates this when he says, ‘I don’t like it! The way you talk to me and the way you look at me. This is my house.’ This makes Eddie feel like he has power over the women of the house, and he thinks of them almost as property subconsciously. ‘He’s stealing from me!’ This is Eddie’s reaction to Rodolfo’s relationship with Catherine, and, as well as showing that he is in love with his niece, it demonstrates how he views Catherine, as property. This is an Old World view of women, whereas Rodolfo, as part of the next generation, shows he feels for Catherine as a person not just wants her for property by saying ‘you are not a horse, a gift, a favour for a poor immigrant’. Rodolfo has subscribed to a more modern way of viewing women compared to Eddie’s view that women are property to be dominated.
Eddie tries to use honour as an excuse for his reactions to Rodolfo, by saying and even thinking that he is just protecting Catherine, as any self-respecting father or uncle would, from a man who is obviously wrong for her. This is the front that he puts on, or maybe believes in, to his family. He says things like, ‘He don’t respect you’, ‘I mean if you close the paper fast – you could blow him over’ and ‘And with that wacky hair; he’s like a chorus girl or sump’m’. Eddie uses anything he can to make Rodolfo seem unfit for Catherine, and takes great pains to try to prove he is homosexual, because he is not only making Catherine happier than Eddie can, but he is less of a macho, old world, “manly” man so Eddie thinks there must be something wrong with him and twists everything about him. The way that Eddie feels about Rodolfo doing things like cooking and singing show another contrast between Old and New world values. For more modern people like Rodolfo and Catherine there is nothing wrong with men doing things that women have traditionally done but the older generations like Eddie see it as not “being a man”.
Even though Eddie feels like this, however, he still defends Rodolfo in public by saying ‘but he’s a kid yet, y’know? He – he’s just a kid, that’s all’ because it would be totally against Old World values to speak badly of anybody in your family to anyone else, because families stick together.
Another reason Eddie dislikes Rodolfo is that he is in America to make money for nobody but himself. Eddie respects Marco enormously because he has gone to all the trouble of emigrating for his starving children and family, whereas Rodolfo has nobody to provide for. This is not very honourable, in Eddie’s eyes, he should help his brother’s family if he doesn’t have his own. ‘A snappy new jacket he buys, records, a pointy pair new shoes and his brother’s kids are starvin’ over there with tuberculosis?’. Rodolfo is breaking away from the traditional Old World values – he dreams of America as a new start for him and has high hopes about New World ideals such as freedom and democracy, and he enjoys the bright lights of New York.
Catherine also represents a new generation siding towards the New World values of equality and freedom. She is beginning to rebel against Eddie about things that are important to her such as the job at the start of the play, and, under the influence of Rodolfo and Beatrice, she disagrees with him more and more and finally is defiant about having the wedding, and Beatrice coming. ‘You got no more right to tell nobody nothin’! Nobody!’. However, although Catherine can stand up to Eddie, Beatrice cannot bring herself to disobey him completely because she was brought up very much believing in the values of the Sicilian codes. ‘Go to your wedding, Katie, I’ll stay home.’ This shows how she has been dominated by Eddie and his male authority.
There are many important decisions made where Old World values are in direct competition with New World values and these make up the most tense and compelling parts of Arthur Miller’s play. Perhaps the most decisive is the moment that Eddie decides to turn away from all the values he has held dear and wound his life around, when he betrays his own family to the immigration office. ‘I want to report something. Illegal immigrants’. He is turning from his beliefs to the values of the New World and then he finds he cannot turn back. When Marco is arrested we see Old World values and New World values side by side as he speaks to Alfieri. ‘MARCO: He knows such a promise is dishonourable. ALFIERI: To promise not to kill is not dishonourable’. Marco shows that he would never make a promise he thinks he will break and he feels that Eddie deserves to die for betraying his family, whereas Alfieri takes the New World values and maintains that he did nothing that merits dying for murder is a terrible sin and can never be justified. In the final scene of the play we have a most horrific situation with Eddie completely betraying everything, going against both the Old and the New World values by springing a knife upon Marco. ‘EDDIE springs a knife into his hand’. This is against Old World values because it was hidden upon his person and he promised to fight Marco hand-to-hand and it is turning away from the law because it is illegal to fight with knives. This shows how desperate Eddie has become that he no longer has any set of values to live by and it is ironic that this brings about his downfall. Eddie’s obsession with Catherine has led to multiple betrayals.
Alfieri’s views, as the most intelligent character in the play, can probably be viewed as the ideas of Arthur Miller himself. Alfieri, throughout the play, acts as a metaphorical bridge between the Old and the New World values having lived through the transition period and knowing each well. As a lawyer, the audience often views him as a believer in the New World values, although he understands what is important to his community and their morals. At the end of the play, Alfieri decides that he prefers the New World values when he says, ‘we settle for half and I like it better’. This is offered as the message of the play through Alfieri’s lips, because the Old World values are shown to destroy lives; Eddie dies, Beatrice is left alone and forlorn, Marco is sent home in disgrace. Arthur Miller has shown the audience that it is indeed better to compromise by good use of conflict between the two sets of values to develop his play well.
