When the boxing starts, Eddie patronises Rodolfo ‘Did I hurt you kid?’ and tries to show Rodolfo up and make him seem inferior. Miller is highlighting the fact that Eddie is always trying to reclaim his place in the household with respect and honour. This is his own way of ‘beating,’ Rodolfo and the only way that he knows, and he does succeed. However, although the other characters interpret Eddie’s actions as comradery and friendship, the audience know, from the meeting with Eddie and Alfieri, why he is really teaching Rodolfo how to fight. Miller shows Eddie rubbing his fists together afterwards to highlight his reasons for fighting him.
However, to dramatise the tension between Rodolfo and Eddie near the end of the scene, Miller shows Rodolfo realising the reason that Eddie is challenging him ‘with a certain gleam and a smile – I was only surprised.’ He responds to this challenge by reminding Eddie that it is not masculinity that Catherine loves him for, it is other things. He asks Catherine to dance, deliberately provoking Eddie because he is doing something that he knows Eddie despises about him, to tell Eddie that he has beaten his ‘mind games.’
Whilst Rodolfo and Catherine are dancing, which is angering Eddie to an extent, he is challenged by Marco. Eddie has respect for Marco, however Marco challenges him to lift a chair, having one hand behind his back. This may seem like a small game of Marco’s that is meaningless, however when Marco lifts the chair he holds it high above his head like a weapon with a ‘glare of warning.’ This is a threat to Eddie, and he will not tolerate threats because it undermines his position in the household and shows the lack of respect that he is striving to maintain. It is also the last thing the audience see before the curtain goes down for the interval, an image of Marco standing over Eddie holding a chair over his head, and it leaves an impression on the audience for them to pick up after the interval.
In this event, Eddie’s attempts to win Catherine back to him are unsuccessful and anger him. Eddie has now been provoked by both of the people that he has let into his home, and this pushes him into taking serious action to get rid of these people who are undermining and embarrassing him, and it is this that leads to Eddie’s drastic actions near the end of the play.
Throughout the play up to this point, Miller has built tension between Eddie, Catherine and Rodolfo, but there has not yet been a full confrontation between the three characters. Eddie’s decline has been shown to the audience through his meetings with Alfieri, and not through conversation with any other characters. The audience sense that a confrontation will be imminent because at the end of act one in the ‘boxing,’ scene Marco and Rodolfo came out on top of Eddie’s ‘mind games,’ and Eddie feels at this point a need to reclaim his position over the other characters and the household. Part of Eddie’s decline is because of his need to be the one in charge, a streak of pride that does not tolerate people to undermine him and Miller has let the audience know this through his meetings with Alfieri.
Miller starts the scene with a little comedy, with Eddie pulling a bottle of whisky out of his pocket, and then another, followed by a third. This comedy puts the audience in an unusual situation because although they are amused, they know that Eddie is drunk and is not held back by his usual restraints, and that there will be more honesty about him now. The audience sense that Eddie will reveal his true feelings to Catherine and that there will be a confrontation, because of the hints that Miller has given to the audience up to this point about Eddie’s increasing fury with Rodolfo, and now Marco.
Miller stages the scene with Catherine and Rodolfo being in the house alone together before Eddie’s arrival. The audience sees this and when Eddie walks in, they fear that the mix of Eddie’s drunken state and Catherine and Rodolfo having just slept together will lead to a confrontation. This mix of feelings, added to the comedy of Eddie’s arrival being in juxtaposition with the argument that is to come, all builds tension into the scene.
There is a sexual undercurrent in the scene at the start because of the situation that Eddie walks into. When Eddie sees this, it sparks up his mixed parental and sexual feelings towards Catherine and his hatred towards Rodolfo. The mix of his feelings, the lack of control of his emotions and his bottled up rage with Rodolfo provokes him into taking the action that he has been longing to take since his second meeting with Alfieri. ‘Pack it up. Go ahead. Get your stuff and get outta here.’
This reaction shows Eddie’s blindness towards the situation. He does not realise that if Rodolfo leaves, Catherine will leave with him because she loves him. It is clear to the audience that Eddie is now a broken man ‘Well, don’t cry.. Oh Eddie, don’t be like that!’ When Catherine talks to him, begging him not to be upset with her, she reaches inside a part of him. He is longing for Catherine and draws him to her and kisses her on the mouth.
Miller could have had many different motives for having Eddie kiss Catherine in this way, and the audience would have several responses to it. Firstly, Eddie is not in control of his emotions, which are extremely complicated. He has a desire for Catherine that he should not have, being her uncle. He does not recognise or understand his obsession with her, but he is jealous of what Catherine and Rodolfo have and is extremely reluctant to be displaced in Catherine’s affections.
The reasons for Eddie then proceeding to kiss Rodolfo are more obvious to the audience. As they find out in the second scene with Eddie and Alfieri, Eddie thinks that Rodolfo may be gay. ‘The guy ain’t right, Mr Alfieri.’ He kisses Rodolfo to tell him that he ‘knows,’ that he is gay and that he ‘knows,’ that Rodolfo wants to marry Catherine only because it would make him a US citizen. He also wants to reveal this to Catherine ‘You see?’ and so the kiss may be to highlight this fact to her.
