What does the Audience Learn About the Community During the Course of the Play and how does Miller Achieve This?

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“What does the Audience Learn About the Community During the Course of the Play and how does Miller Achieve This?”

Throughout the course of this essay I will be focusing on answering this question; what is learned about the Italian community in the play and what does Arthur Miller do to achieve this? In order to answer effectively answer this I will discuss the themes and ideas surrounding homo-sexuality, loyalty and masculinity and will also be discussing the dramatic device of language.

As Italy was now one of the most overcrowded countries in Europe. Many Italians began to consider the possibility of leaving Italy to escape low wages and high taxes. Most of these immigrants were from rural areas of Sicily with very little education. From 1890 to 1900 roughly 700,000 Italians arrived in the United States and from 1900 to 1910 roughly 2,100,000 Italians emigrated to America , of whom most were men planning to raise some money and return home to Italy. Most Italians found unskilled labour in American cities such as Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and Detroit.

The Italian migrant community living in Ney York City had very strong community values most of which are presented in the play. In the play there is strong emphasis on the importance of loyalty (being committed to doing what was best for you’re your family/community this often meant protecting illegal immigrants) within the Italian community. This is shown when Eddie tells the story of Vinny Bolzano’s exclusion from the community after he snitches to the immigration bureau about his uncle an illegal immigrant staying at their house. Eddie tells this story to Catherine in order to demonstrate the importance of protecting illegal immigrants and the consequences that occur if you do not. This is also relevant to the essay question because this story also demonstrates the importance of loyalty in the Italian-American community.

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Throughout the play we can also see how Italian men have strong sense of masculinity (It is an Italian-American norm for the men to provide for their families and for the women to look after the family also the most dominating males tend to be the strongest and therefore most masculine males) in the play. The sense of masculinity amongst Italian- American men maybe more so than in other cultures. This is shown when Marco challenges Eddie’s masculinity when he asks him whether he can lift a chair with only one hand to show that he is stronger than ...

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