There are other journeys between extremes that could be the 'bridge´ of the play, e.g. Eddie’s transformation into a character like the Vinnie Bolzano he described previously. Eddie’s unavoidable crossing from a happy family circumstance into the situation that Alfieri predicted "You won't have a friend in the world...Put it out of your mind". As Eddie changes in character and his desperation increases his view of the events unfolding is warped. He becomes obsessed with Rudolpho´s sexuality and unsuitability for Catherine and repeatedly refers to what he regards as proof of this, for example his 'blond hair´, the laughter of his friends, and his singing. He truly believes that Rudolpho is gay, and states it almost outright several times, 'that guy ain´t right´ and he’s 'so pretty you could kiss him´!
However, I personally feel that the most likely reason for Arthur Miller’s naming of the play as "A View from the Bridge" is the obvious metaphor of the audience’s perspective.
Second Part
“A View from the Bridge” is set just after the Second World War in the 1950s. However, it has its roots in the late 1940s when Arthur Miller became interested in the work and lives of the communities of the dockworkers and longshoremen of New York’s Brooklyn harbour, “the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge……… the gullet of New York,” where Arthur Miller had himself previously worked. In this play the main characters are Eddie Carbone, Catherine, Beatrice Carbone, Marco, Rodolfo and Alfieri. In the play, Alfieri is a lawyer and the narrator of the play and Eddie is the main character, who was born in America. Beatrice is Eddie’s wife and Catherine is his niece. Marco and Rodolfo are illegal immigrants from Italy; they are Beatrice’s cousins. In the play Eddie is a longshoreman, Beatrice is the housewife and Catherine goes to school and now she wants to work, while Marco and Rodolfo want to immigrate and work in America to escape from poverty. The area where Eddie lives and which has welcomed the immigrants is known for its violence. “Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. Justice is very important here.” Even Alfieri, the lawyer, was scared. He used to keep pistols in his cabinets. However, the neighbourhood has become less violent than it used to be in the past, as is revealed when Alfieri says, “I no longer keep a pistol in my filing cabinet.”
In this play Eddie desires his niece Catherine. This is not natural; an uncle should have his own love for a niece but not the love like loving another girl romantically. Eddie can’t help the way he feels about Catherine. He doesn’t want anyone to have her; he doesn’t even let her go out. When Eddie welcomes Marco and Rodolfo with generosity, he doesn’t think that Catherine will start falling in love with one of Beatrice’s cousins. However, as the play progresses, Catherine starts to fall in love with Rodolfo, and Eddie, the uncle, is jealous because he assumes, or convinces himself that, Rodolfo’s love for Catherine is counterfeit because he wants to be a legal citizen of America. Eddie then goes to tell Alfieri, who gives him some wise advice. “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.” When Eddie suspects that Catherine has started to love Rodolfo he becomes really angry and confused. Marco tries to protect his brother from Eddie because, in the play, Eddie punches Rodolfo, so Marco then becomes irritated and shows his protectiveness and sense of outrage by picking up the chair, a symbolic gesture which conveys to Eddie that if he wants to fight Marco’s brother, then he will have to fight Marco. “He transforms from what might appear like a glare of warning into a smile of triumph, and Eddie’s grin vanished as he absorbs his look.” This is a turning point in the play where the balance of power dramatically shifts and Eddie loses his authority in the Carbone household.
Beatrice endeavors to keep the peace between Eddie, Marco and Rodolfo, but Beatrice does not succeed in maintaining the peace as her husband’s forbidden desire for Catherine leads to Eddie’s death at the end of the play. The characters’ opinions of each other change dramatically throughout the play as at the start Beatrice thinks that Eddie is in love with her and that he loves Catherine as a niece and nothing else. However as the drama unfolds Beatrice conjectures that Eddie does not like Catherine purely as a niece but also secretly as a girlfriend; he has both emotional and physical feelings for her. Beatrice indirectly tries to warn her niece about Eddie, and tells her, “I told you fifty times already, you can’t act the way you act. You still walk around in front of him in your slip. Or like you sit on the edge of the bathtub talking to him when he’s shavin’ in his underwear.” Also she tries to tactfully give her advice about how to behave when she is around him. She says “If you act like a baby and he be treatin’ you like a baby. Like when he comes home sometimes you throw yourself at him like when you was twelve years old.” After this, however, Eddie oversteps the mark and kisses Catherine passionately as if she was his girlfriend.
The stage directions show the tension that all of the characters experience, for example Eddie. He reveals his tension in the play by “unconsciously twisting the newspaper into a tight roll”, “he has bent the rolled the paper and it suddenly tears in two.” After that he changes the subject and quickly talks about boxing. He doesn’t want to feel this way about his niece, but he can’t help it, so most of the time he changes the subject. Here he is angry and frustrated that Rodolpho is trying to take Catherine away, so he changes the subject to boxing. At this moment Eddie is jealous of Rodolpho and teaches him basic boxing techniques, but Eddies jealousy goes over the top, and he punches Rodolpho deliberately, but behaves as if was a accident.
In the play the characters struggle a lot, for example Eddie struggles when Beatrice finds out that he loves Catherine not just as a niece but also with desire. At this stage Eddie is struggling desperately, as he wants to persuade Beatrice that his feelings for Catherine are innocent and purely paternal. Eddie comes up with all kinds of justifications but near the end when he sees his opportunity; Eddie kisses Catherine emotionally when he is drunk. However, at the end, Eddie still struggles, as he now struggles to persuade Beatrice, Catherine and Rodolpho. He dodges telling them what they already know in their hearts by going out to fight Marco to try to reclaim his reputation. By fighting Marco and dying he doesn’t have to admit to Beatrice, Catherine and Rodolpho that he loves Catherine emotionally and not just as a niece. We can see that Eddie is struggling as when any of the characters raise the topic of Catherine, as Alfieri and Beatrice do, he stutters a lot and struggles to talk properly. For Eddie the taboo is that he doesn’t want to admit to loving Catherine emotionally, and as for Rodolpho he doesn’t want to talk about taking Catherine back to his home country Italy. In the drama, the main secret is the relationship connecting Eddie and Catherine. Eddie’s main secret is that he loves Catherine emotionally and not just as a niece and also that he is bisexual. This secret is revealed as he kisses Catherine and then kisses Rodolpho immediately afterwards.
In the play Eddie breaks the community law and Marco breaks the official national law. Eddie betrays the community law as in that community one of the laws is not to tell the authorities about any illegal immigrants in the neighbourhood. Eddie tells the authorities about Marco and Rodolpho. Conversely Marco breaks the national law, as one of the national laws is that it is a crime to kill anyone, and Marco breaks this law by murdering Eddie at the end. I believe that the community law is morally fair as I believe that in the community you should not ‘squeal’ and tell the immigration bureau about immigrants in the community, because if you were an illegal immigrant you would not like to be betrayed and deported to your home country. Here Arthur Miller increases our sense of resentment, when Eddie betrays the brothers by evoking sympathy for Marco and Rodolpho, especially Marco, by portraying them not a ‘scroungers’ but as innocent victims of poverty and as likeable and admirable men. I think here Miller is making a social and political point about the moral injustice of the official law for example when Marco describes how his wife and children ‘eat the sunshine’.
The official law and the community law clash a lot in the play, for example you could be rupturing both of the laws together if you didn’t know what they were. You could break both the official law and the community law if you betrayed the immigrants. The community law and the official law collide when Eddie tells the authorities about Rodolpho and Marco, and Marco refuses to promise not to kill Eddie. Alfieri tries to make Marco promise: “to promise not to kill is not dishonourable”. However Marco doesn’t acquiesce and, as time moves on, Marco tells Alfieri what he thinks of the official rules and declares that he doesn’t understand this country and its rules: “He degraded my brother. My blood. He robbed my children, he mocks my work, there is no law for that? Where is the law for that? I don’t understand this country.” The most important law to the characters in the play is the community law, as the play is set in a neighbourhood of American-Italians, who welcome immigrants from Italy. So, if anyone betrays them or tells the authorities they are breaking the community law, which is more important than the American law, both to the characters and to me.
We know that the community law is the most important law because before the immigrants come to America, Beatrice tells Catherine about their next-door neighbour, a boy who grassed up his uncle. As a cautionary tale, she tells Catherine what the boy’s family did to him in revenge. “He had five brothers and an old father. And they grabbed him in the kitchen and pulled him down the stairs- three flights his head was bouncing like a coconut. And they spit on him in the street, his own father and his brothers. The whole neighbourhood was cryin’.” Eddie advises Catherine never to behave like the boy and warns her never to tell the immigration office about her aunt’s cousins. “Remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.” In the play Eddie is breaks the community law by his treacherous action to the two brothers from Italy, Marco and Rodolfo. Marco killing him at the end of the play later punishes Eddie. The clash between these laws causes the tension to increase as now each of the characters has broken a law. Eddie breaks the community law by being disloyal to the brothers and Marco has broken the official law by killing Eddie in revenge.
In the play, most of the characters have set themselves aims so that they can survive in America and so their families can survive in other countries. For example, Marco’s dream was to find a job and send money home to his wife in Italy, so that she could obtain medicine and food for the children and herself, and so that they could feel secure that he could support them. Conversely, Catherine’s intention was to find a job and work, so that she could achieve her independence, and acquaint herself with different kinds of people. On the other hand, Rodolfo’s endeavour was to become an American citizen, so that he would have no fear of being caught by the authorities. In the play we know that these dreams don’t come true as most of them are destroyed. Marco’s dream is destroyed when Eddie tells the immigration bureau about him being an illegal immigrant. Marco is furious and knows who the culprit was so he confronts Eddie and says that by telling the immigration police, Eddie has killed his children as now he can’t send money back to Italy for their medicine and food. “That one! He killed my children! That one stole food from my children!” After this incident Marco’s dreams are shattered. He is now frustrated by what Eddie has done as now he is going to be deported to Italy and therefore can no longer give money to his children and his wife. In the play Marco seems a character in a no-win situation as now he has to go back to Italy, while Rodolfo is allowed to stay in the U.S.A as after marrying Catherine he can be a legal citizen of America.
The unsaid truth, about Eddie loving Catherine emotionally, gradually comes out into the open when Eddie and Beatrice argue on Catherine’s wedding day and Beatrice tells Eddie that he can’t have Catherine. “(Crying out, weeping) the truth is not as bad as blood, Eddie tells her goodbye forever!” If the scene had continued then we could’ve seen what would have happened, but Marco comes and Eddie goes after him.
Eddie is responsible for the tension in the play as he becomes over-protective of Catherine and starts to manipulate her and try to ruin her life. I don’t think that the characters can help the way they feel as in life you see and get to know people, which then leads you to love them in the end. However, I think that when Eddie kisses Catherine it is reprehensible. I think Catherine could have changed what she did and how she did things. When she falls in love with Rodolfo she should have followed her instincts and gone for whatever she thought was suitable for her, as now she is old enough to do what she wants and not let Eddie control her life. I believe that there is justice at the end when Eddie dies, as now Beatrice can know the truth that Eddie doesn’t love her and that he loves Catherine instead. Also now Catherine can be free to control her own life and marry Rodolfo without listening to Eddie and knowing that now Eddie is gone he won’t try to hurt or victimize her or Rodolfo for loving and marrying each other. I think that Eddie deserves to die as he has been rude, uncooperative and mean to the rest of the characters in the play, and that therefore by dying he has given them peace in their lives. I think that Eddie was the only person responsible as he tried to ruin Catherine’s life by telling the authorities and he also ruined other characters’ lives, like the morally innocent Marco and Beatrice. This leads to his death, which gives them more air to breathe. However, overall I think that no one is to blame for Eddie’s death because it is Eddie’s feelings for Catherine that lead to his tragic death, and these feelings of desire are out of his control.
