From the very beginning of the play Alfieri hints towards tragedy, he does this a few times in his prologue, for example, he says:
“I am inclined to see the ruin in things,”
This tells the audience or readers straight away, at the beginning of the play that Alfieri can see that Eddie’s story is going to end in disaster. Towards the end of the prologue, it is clear that Alfieri can do nothing to avert the play from tragedy.
“another lawyer, quite differently dressed,
heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I,
watched it run its bloody course.”
The quote explains that nobody could do anything to change what is going to happen. It also hints that blood is going to be spilt and someone is going to die.
When Marco and Rodolfo first arrive they act very differently, Marco enters the house greets everyone and shows Eddie a lot of respect and thanks him, whereas Rodolfo does not show any gratitude toward Eddie at all. The stage instructions show that Eddie, whenever he asks a question about them, he goes to Marco and totally bypasses Rodolfo. Eddie shows hostility towards him from the very beginning, for example, when Rodolfo starts singing “Paper Doll,” Eddie interrupts and warns him that by singing it could raise suspicion about them because singing is different and as Eddie says:
“Because we never
had no singers here…and all of a sudden there’s a
singer in the house, y’know what I mean?”
Eddie begins to act differently, jealous that he is no longer getting all the attention in the house, instead, Rodolfo is getting all of the attention from the women, he doesn’t like this so he stops him from singing and uses the excuse above to regain control of the household.
The first time Eddie meets Alfieri to see if there is any legal action he can take against Rodolfo to get him away from Catherine. He is now incredibly jealous of Rodolfo and Catherine’s relationship, this is because of his incest feeling for “Katy”, Alfieri tells him about how he feels is wrong during their meeting:
“We all love
somebody, the wife, the kids- every man’s got somebody
that he loves, heh? But sometimes…there’s too much. You
know? There’s too much and it goes where it mustn’t.”
Eddie cannot admit these feelings, and gets annoyed that he can’t do anything without immigration officers finding out about Marco and Rodolfo because it would involve betrayal, and that creates conflict within him. On one hand, he could betray Marco and Rodolfo and go against every thing he stands for by telling immigration, but on the other he could leave things as the stand and sit back to watch Catherine get married to Rodolfo and push his feelings aside.
It is because Eddie cannot push his feelings for “Katy” aside that he dies, whatever he did he could not let her grow up. As Alfieri said, he did love her too much in the wrong way. This play could have ended many ways without violence, for instance, if Eddie forgot about his incest feeling or if Marco could have forgiven Eddie and apologised when Eddie demanded for “his name,” maybe the characters would have acted differently, but because they did not this play demonstrates many examples of betrayal, justice, honour, death and many other themes. Alfieri provides link between scenes and helps the audience understand Eddie and in a way the way he thinks.
