A View From the Bridge

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Examine the themes of manliness, hostility and aggression in ‘A View From the Bridge’ and how dramatic tension is created through these themes.

The themes of manliness, hostility and aggression can often be found throughout many of history’s novels and plays. Showing manliness is demonstrating courage, strength, power and honour; however hostility and aggression are similar. The only difference is that hostility is unfriendly or aggressive behaviour while aggression is hostility put into actions. Each characteristic can easily be identified in ‘A View From the Bridge’ by Arthur Miller through analyzing the masculinity of the characters Eddie Carbone and his wife’s cousin, Marco, who along with his brother travelled to New York City as illegal immigrants from Sicily, and how their historical Sicilian culture is exhibited.

Sicily, a large island off the coast of but also a region of Italy, has its own distinct and traditional culture. Most of the time, a child will stay in the home of their parents until the time of their marriage; which shows how large the role of the family is in a Sicilian’s life. The eldest man is the head of the household, who demands and, more often than not, receives the largest amount of respect of anyone in the entire family; this can be seen by analyzing Eddie’s character throughout the drama. Moreover, the way in which Sicilians view honour is not much different than the modern day; if one were to betray their own family or anyone else in their community, that person would be excluded from the society. An example of this would be the case shown in ‘A View From the Bridge’ called the Vinny Bolzano story. In this instance, a family living in New York City decided to take in an uncle of theirs who would be travelling illegally from Italy. A teenager in the family, Vinny Bolzano, decided to inform Immigration that someone was unlawfully living in his house. Once the uncle had been taken away, the other men in the family dragged Vinny down a flight of stairs with “‘…his head bouncing like a coconut.’” Analyse the simile – aggressive After this, the family spat on their disowned son and brother who was, at this point, lying in the street. As well as their intricate honour code, the Sicilian people also have their own stand point on law and justice. With reference to Alfieri’s opening monologue, the law has not been a good concept in Sicily since the Greeks were driven out of Italy and because of this, as shown later in the drama, Sicilians sometimes take the law into their own hands in this Greek tragedy.

By definition, a tragedy is a serious drama in which a central character, usually an important, heroic person, meets with disaster either through some personal fault, this is known as their fatal flaw, or through unavoidable circumstances. In most cases, the protagonist's downfall conveys a sense of human dignity in the face of conflict. make it clear Eddie is the protagonist Furthermore, a Greek tragedy usually has a member or members of the cast called the chorus who comment on the on the action taking place in the play. In ‘A View From the Bridge’, this character is Alfieri; a lawyer who predicts Eddie’s ruin to be caused by acts of hostility and aggression. This is shown by Alfieri’s monologue introducing the themes by telling the audience he “…watched it run its bloody course…” This dramatic work is an example of a Greek tragedy as Eddie is faced with the conflict of allowing his wife’s niece, Catherine, to marry Marco’s younger brother, Rodolfo. This brings out Eddie fatal flaw; his over protectiveness of Catherine and confused feelings towards her. This conflict between two of the drama’s stereotypical men eventually leads to Eddie’s downfall and, consequently, his sudden yet foreshadowed death.

The male characters in the tragedy all show qualities that are commonly used to identify a stereotypical man. Janet Saltzman Chafetz describes the seven areas of masculinity as being physically athletic, the provider for the family, sexually aggressive, experienced and heterosexual, unemotional, intellectual on a logical and rational level, a dominating and independent leader and also as an ambitious, proud, moral and adventurous individual. Eddie and Marco possess most if not all of these qualities, as they both provide for their families, in New York or in Sicily, both are described as large and muscular, neither of them show much emotion for the first few scenes and they are both heterosexual.

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The drama starts off as Eddie is taking control of Catherine; the audience can see that the way in which he holds her back shows Eddie’s masculinity, through the Sicilian stereotype and the modern day version. Once Catherine tells Eddie that she has acquired a job, at first Eddie does not agree with the idea of his niece going to work before she has finished her education by saying “It’s not wonderful. You’ll never get nowheres unless you finish school. You can’t take no job…” This demonstrates Eddie’s manliness since, in Sicilian culture, he is the head of the house ...

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