Alfieri is the character who represents the corporate federal law. He is the only lawyer in the area and if people have legal problems he is the man they go to see. He is a character of compassion and understanding the only person Eddie can speak to. I think his role is like a Greek chorus he is the person with the ‘View From The Bridge’, but he maintains a small amount of involvement, with the other characters. He explains who Eddie is and reveals the story as it goes along. But unlike a Greek chorus Alfieri does get involved in the action a little. His relationship with Eddie is interesting, it’s as if he live vicariously through Eddie’s life as his own life is passionless. “And my practice is entirely unromantic”. Alfieri always maintains a small amount of involvement with other characters.
At the beginning of the play Alfieri says that “The law is very important here”. This comment is very true without any kind of formal law there would be havoc on the waterfront and more than the occasional case of scotch whisky would go missing from pier 43 on December 23rd. However in such an unlawful place, the corporate federal law doesn’t have much power.
Eddie tells his family that if they pretend not to know anything about Marco and Rodolfo, there is no proof that they have been harbouring illegal immigrants “I don’t care what the question is you –don’t-know-nothing. They got stool pigeons all over this neighbourhood, they’re payin’ them every week for information and you don’t know who they are”. This is precisely the way the society works, based on distrust between the community and the corporate federal law.
Perhaps one of the reasons the community distrusts the corporate federal law so much is that it does not appear to be justice. Alfieri himself says “This is not God… only God makes justice”. The idea that the corporate federal law is inadequate comes out in a few places in the play. The best reference is when Marco is in jail and talks to Alfieri about what will happen to Eddie. Marco says “The law? All the law is not in a book” to which Alfieri replies “yes in a book, there is no other law” this clearly sums up how inadequate the corporate federal law really is.
At the beginning of the play Alfieri says “law is very important here” by the end of the play he says “justice is very important here” signifying a change from the need for law to the need for justice.
However there is another type of law, the community law. This can be broken down further between members of the Carbone family and the law between the members of the immigrant community. Within the Carbone family Eddie is the ‘boss’, he makes his own rules and the rest of the family have to abide by them. That system works well as long as Catherine and Beatrice agree with Eddie but as soon as they disagree the whole system breaks down.
This is seen clearly in two places on the play, the first is when Beatrice decides it would be in Catherine’s best interest to accept the job offered her as a stenographer. Eddie disagrees as he believes that she could get a better job if she finishes school, “That ain’t what I wanted” says Eddie. The result is an argument and nothing really gets resolved.
The second example is Catherine’s relationship with Rodolfo. Eddie is absolutely against the relationship and eventually ends up reporting Marco and Rodolfo to the immigration bureau to prevent the imminent marriage. This is something that is considered injustice amongst the mainly immigrant community and by breaking the community law in this way, Eddie ends up without a ‘friend in the world’. We see this when the stage directions read “Lipari the butcher, turns and starts up left with his arm around his wife” and “Eddie turns and starts crossing down right to Louis and Mike” “ Louis barely turns, then walks off and exits down right with Mike. Only Beatrice is left on the stoop. Catherine now returns blank eyed, from offstage and the car. Eddie calls after Louis and Mike.
The final and most important law is community law. Community law is a sort of ‘jungle law’ based on Sicilian values in which only the strong survive. In the world of the waterfront, ‘jungle law’ plays a very important part of everyday life for the characters.
The corporate federal law is not entirely justice so the characters need their own understanding about what is acceptable and what is not and everyone in the society knows what the punishments are.
Eddies punishment for his crime comes in three ways, firstly he loses his reputation in the neighbourhood. Secondly he loses the respect of his friends and family and third he ends up dead. All as a direct result of ‘snitching’ on Marco and Rodolfo to the immigration authorities to prevent Rodolfo and Catherine getting married.
However if someone steals a few jars of coffee or a bottle of whisky while unloading a ship, nobody in the community minds at all, as it is normal and petty, even though in corporate federal law it is completely wrong. On the twenty-third of that December a case of scotch whisky slipped from a net while unloading – as a case of scotch whisky is inclined to do on the twenty-third of December on Pier Forty one.”
The whole play involves symbolism on many different levels. The end scene in which Eddie takes his own life with his own knife is symbolic of self-destructive nature that led to such an ending, as Arthur Miller wished to write ‘a modern Greek tragedy’. This also shows the irony the Eddie drove himself to take drastic actions and bring his death upon himself. During the confrontation earlier Marco raised a chair like a weapon symbolic of a fight yet to come.
Justice is the key factor in the final out come of “A View From The Bridge” as without the need for it the ending would have been totally different.
I think Arthur Miller wrote this play to give people an insight on how justice doesn’t always prevail when a strong bond is broken. I think he was inspired o write the play because his parents were immigrants, and he also came across many Italian immigrants. I think Miller wanted to give people an insight into the lives of these illegal immigrants to show that many of them only want to work to send money home in comparison to his parents.
I think the effect that justice had on Eddie destroyed the bond between the family as it drove Catherine away and nearly Beatrice. I think the reason Beatrice stayed with Eddie was because she is very mentally fragile and did not have enough will power to leave him. I think the person obviously affected most was Eddie, as it was his own unrequited discreet love for Catherine that drove him to turn to the law and dishonour the community, and lose his life.
