The beginning of the play is preparation and build up for the rest of the play. The beginning gives the audience an idea an insight to how the final incident occurred. The reoccuring pattern of the society is disturbed when Eddie comes home from a hard day at work, while Beatrice is looking after the house. Two things disrupt the established social order; one is Catherine announcing that her school has offered her a job. This shows that Catherine is growing up and her becoming an independent woman. This could also mean that Eddie will no longer have a fatherly hold over her. The second disruption was the arrival of Beatrice’s cousins, the two illegal immigrants; Marco and Rodolfo.
From the start of the play there is always a wrong sense of fate. It is hard for Eddie to escape his fatal flaw which is noticably Eddie lusting ove his niece. We, the audience feel sympathy for Eddie. We seem to feel sorry for him as he is just trying to protect his niece from the outside world, as he feels he is expected to do. This feeling stops when Eddie refers to Alfieri to find a law to justify how he feels for Catherine, how his feelings for her have become more than a love between an uncle and a niece. Eddies’ feeling of love has turn into a desire for Catherine. Miller also makes the chorus more effective by turning Alfieri into a character, and not just having him as a narrator but bringing him into the play with an effective role as a lawyer.
It is at the end of act 1 that we see exactly who the antagonist, Marco is. The audience sees Marco challenge Eddie to a chair- lifting contest to prove his manhood and authority, his body language tells Eddie not to touch his younger brother, who moments before got punched by Eddie.
Miller makes the play more effective with the antagonist by putting him into the actual role play at the end of act 1. We are left wondering as to why Marco is there, what is his part in the drama.
Unlike the Antagonist, the protagonist is introduced from the first scene, Eddie Carbone. At first we don’t see him as the mean and vicious person he later turns out to be. From this we get an understanding as to what kind of ‘hero’ he is. During the course of the play Eddie becomes an evil ‘hero’. Making the protagonist an evil person makes the play more effective. At no point does Eddie actually break the law, but instead breaks the rules of society. The society in which Eddie lives, (full of Italian immigrants) has made it a golden rule not to snitch, not to tell on anyone that may be doing something wrong in the governments eyes but not in theirs. Eddie makes this the first thing that Catherine and Beatrice have to know before the arrivals of the cousins. He tells them a true story about Vinnie B, how he betrayed his family by snitching to the authorities about the illegal immigrants his family was hiding. As a result Vinnie gets treated like a foreigner in his own family, and gets thrown down the stairs and has to leave the house despite being the youngest.
In this play there is unity of time, place and action, all the action appears to be continuous in one place. Miller brings unity into the play, everything happens over a period of time there are no gaps except the gap between Acts 1& 2 allowing time for Catherine and Rodolfo’s relationship to grow; the unity in this play brings all the action, betray and romance in one place so it gives the audience a better understanding as what is happening. Whereas if one thing was happening in Jersey and another thing in New York it wouldn’t keep the audience interested.
Miller creates a sense of pity and sorrow over the audience at the very end of the drama. Eddie ringing the Immigration Bureau brings us to the catastrophe. It is Marco who breaks the law. We, as the viewers, believe that Marco has done nothing wrong but to defend his beliefs, which is to protect his name and by doing so protecting his family. Eddies manliness was challenged when Marco confronted him to a chair lifting contest; this warned Eddie to stay away from Rodolfo.
Mixing the pathos and misery with the catastrophe of Eddie’s death makes the drama much more effective. After taking a traumatic journey through Eddies mind, the audience is left to think that he will never love Beatrice again because he has been showing all his emotions, especially ‘lust’ the feeling that is usually associated with couples, towards her niece, but Miller surprises us because Eddie reclaims his love for his wife Beatrice, this is a very tear-jerking scene. He turns what the law says is right into a moral wrong, by having Eddie obey the law and telling the authorities that there are illegal immigrants in the community, but by doing so he is also put the lives of Marcos’ family in Sicily in jeopardy.
Miller has borrowed many elements from the Greek Tragedy; he has used the prologue to set the basis of the play, which gave a strong sense of fate from the beginning that something awful is going to come out of Eddie taking in the two cousins. Miller has used Eddie as the Protagonist and also an evil hero. The unity of time and place has been used through out the whole play to give the audience understanding; having things done within 24 hours was significant as to what happened the next day. To have many scenes in separate places may have confused the audience. Miller made the chorus more effective by using the narrator (Alfieri) as the voice behind the story, he expressed the traditional morals and the social attitudes that the audience relate to. The pathos has been used several times in this piece of drama, one example being, when Eddie reclaims his love for Beatrice. This was a tear-jerking scene in the drama, not just making the play dramatic but allowing the audience to feel pity and sorrow for Eddie. Miller borrowing such elements has made the play more effective.
