A View from the Bridge

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How does Arthur Miller utilise the character of Alfieri to contribute to the Dramatic effect of “A View from the Bridge”?

        A View from the Bridge reflects Miller's background in terms of its setting, plot and context. Arthur Miller was born on October 17th, 1915, in New York City. His parents were both immigrants into the United States. The family lived in affluence due to the success of his father’s clothing manufacturing business. A View from the Bridge is staged in the 1940’s when Arthur Miller was intrigued in the manual labour, psychological view and the personal lives of the communities of the dockworkers and longshoremen that worked in the Brooklyn Harbour and formerly where Miller worked. Arthur Miller imagined that the Brooklyn docks were ‘a dangerous and mysterious world at the water’s edge that drama and literature had never touched.’ Miller thought he could have captured this dramatic effect and some of his own family truths where dockworkers and longshoremen where poorly paid; exploited by their employers and who were in many cases only recent immigrants to the United States, having come to America, as Miller’s parents had done in hope of work, wealth and security that their home countries could not assure.

           Alfieri plays the part of a narrator and a lawyer in the play which is unusual for a post 1940 play. Arthur Miller uses the role of Alfieri to explain the themes of the play more unequivocally because in his last play ‘The Crucible’ was criticized for not making the themes and motives in the play comprehensible; Miller thought they didn’t understand the inner parts of the themes.

         In the final scene of the play it is ended as it started by Alfieri making the themes especially unambiguous he feels that compromise is better and that ‘now we settle for half.’ This connotes that Miller thought it is better to get half of something rather than a whole of one thing because sometimes it is just unnecessary to have the entire thing and it could end up hurting someone, plus Miller thought it was too covetous. Here Miller exceptionally uses Alfieri to implement the theme of justice and compromise and he purposefully manipulates it to interact with the audience by using a soliloquy; whilst summing up and introducing the play this use of repetition enforces, elucidates and leaves us with a serious moral message, which all enhances the dramatic effect. Miller wanted to make it apparent that no law should be absolute it should be impartial then everyone is content. In conjunction with the theme of justice in Alfieri’s opening speech Miller really utilises the role of Alfieri to inform the audience the significance of justice ‘Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men.’ This denotes that the law has to criminate people like this and justice needs to be served. Miller ends that paragraph with a powerful, short sentence, ‘Justice is very important here.’ This again demonstrates that Miller has successfully utilised the character Alfieri to make the themes and moral messages of the play more explicit to the audiences, which all contributes to the dramatic effect created.
        Throughout the play Alfieri acts as Miller’s voice in the play to interact and inform the audience, ‘You wouldn’t have known it, but something amusing has just happened.’ By introducing the play using this technique of contrast (because it is a tragedy) he grasps the audience’s attention, he also makes fun of the critics by making it exceedingly obvious by directly telling them what is going on. Again Miler uses Alfieri to speak his mind, ‘I am a lawyer… We’re only thought of in connection with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close.’ This creates the impression that the streets of Brooklyn where a bad place, full of immigrants and lawyers were considered to be a higher class in that time, ‘We’re…’ and ‘They’re…’ as Alfieri uses these personal pronouns to depict lawyers and then the rest of civilization. Arthur Miller uses the role of Alfieri to portray his own views of the society of Brooklyn in the 1940’s.

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        Miller also uses Alfieri to notify the audience about his and others feelings, ‘every man’s got somebody that he loves, heh? But sometimes…there is too much…too much love for the niece.’ This is where Miller uses Alfieri’s intelligence in emphasizing the fact that Eddie is showing a great deal of affection towards Catherine where it is not needed and he will just end up hurting himself. He conveys this message to Eddie in an unsophisticated comportment by repeating the words ‘too much love’ so Eddie can understand what he is telling him and he informs the audience how Eddie feels ...

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