Conflict and tension in the final scene of act 1 of "A View from the Bridge".

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Abdul Sabbir        10a        05/05/2007

CONFLICT AND TENSION IN THE FINAL SCENE

OF ACT 1 OF “A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE”

“A View from the Bridge” was written by Arthur Miller. The play is about the Sicilian community. The main characters are, Eddie, Beatrice, Catherine, Marco, Rodolfo and Alfieri. At the start of the play Beatrice’s cousins arrive in New York as submarines. This means that they are illegal immigrants. This causes Tension and Conflict because when Catherine and Rodolfo fall in love, Eddie gets jealous because he has an unnatural love for Catherine. Eddie thinks that Rodolfo is marrying Catherine so he can be a American citizen. And also Eddie makes things up about Rodolfo saying that he is gay, just because he sings, cooks and he can sew.

The first example of conflict is between Marco and Eddie, Marco realises what Eddie is up to and he gets up, he goes to Eddie and says

“can you lift this chair” Eddie reply’s

“what do you mean?”  

Marco gets up on one knee with one hand  behind his back , and grasps the bottom of one of the chair legs but does not lift it. Then Eddie try’s lifting the chair but he struggles and leans over to the floor, Marco then raises the chair higher and higher raising to his feet. Marco and Eddie are now face to face and the chair raised above Eddie’s head – and transforms what might appear like a glare of warning in to a smile of triumph, and Eddies grin vanishes as he absorbs his look.

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The second conflict is within a character where the character (Catherine) is confused about what to do.

The last type of conflict is conflict between 2 sets of laws or values which means two people arguing about what the law say’s and if its wrong to do something which will break the law.

An example of conflict between characters would be between Eddie and Catherine when Catherine says that she’s got a job and she wants to work and Eddie refuses to let her work.

“You’ll never get no where unless you finish school. You can’t take ...

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