How does Arthur Miller develop our understanding of the experiences of the characters in Act One of ‘A View From The Bridge’?

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How does Arthur Miller develop our understanding of the experiences of the characters in Act One of ‘A View From The Bridge’?

In the play ‘A View From The Bridge’ By Arthur Miller he try’s to create a realistic social setting to help us understand the play more. In the play there are five main characters Eddie, Beatrice, Catherine, Rodolpho and Marco. I will look at various aspects of the play to try and create a better understanding of it.

The social setting in this play is that people in the community don’t trust each other with anything that is to do with family. Family is very important to everybody in the community, much more important than friends. The people in the community are familiar with the law and have a past with it. The people lead a relatively simple life and Arthur Miller helps to get this point across by having a simple set and having a simple technique for changing location. The play draws a lot on the past of Sicily, things like people fearing and not trusting the law. Shown by this quote on pg12 during Alfieri’s first speech.

“You see how uneasily they nod to me? That’s because I’m a lawyer.”

Also the tight family bonds that were in the past of Sicily.

The way that Arthur Miller creates an historical setting is by structuring the play similar to a Greek Tragedy. The plays like a Greek Tragedy for many reasons such as it having a chorus (Alfieri), the play dealing with family drama, it has a male hero, you know what’s going to happen from the start and the hero has a fatal flaw (in the case of Eddie it’s probably that he gets too jealous). Even with all these similarities it is in some ways unlike a Greek Tragedy such as instead of it being about rich aristocrats/royalty it’s about poor, not well-educated lower class people.

Alfieri has two roles in this play. One of the roles he is an actual character who guides and advises Eddie in his family life.

“Eddie I want you to listen to me. You know, sometimes god mixes up the people. We all love somebody, the wife, the kids-every mans got somebody that he loves, heh?”

In his other role he is the narrator/chorus (like in a Greek Tragedy) and helps to create the atmosphere in each scene.

“But this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the ...

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Alfieri has two roles in this play. One of the roles he is an actual character who guides and advises Eddie in his family life.

“Eddie I want you to listen to me. You know, sometimes god mixes up the people. We all love somebody, the wife, the kids-every mans got somebody that he loves, heh?”

In his other role he is the narrator/chorus (like in a Greek Tragedy) and helps to create the atmosphere in each scene.

“But this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge.”

In this role after each main event that may be difficult to understand Alfieri usually comes on to explain what has just happened or is happening.

“Eddie Carbone never expected to have a destiny…Now, as the weeks passed, there was a future, there was a trouble that would not go away.”

Alfieri doesn’t just try to explain what has just happened but seeing as the characters aren’t very good at expressing themselves he also says what they are thinking and how they feel. Alfieri is like the chorus in a Greek Tragedy. He usually comes in and out of darkness, which helps to set the atmosphere of the play, and also the darkness of the past in Sicily. Alfieri summarises important events and also summarises Eddie, to explain if he has just done something strange and make us understand why it happened.

Many tensions develop within the group of characters in the play. Part of the reason for this is the characters inability express their emotions and to communicate with each other. Because of this inability, anything that is troubling them or if they have a problem is just bottled up inside them and creates even more tensions within the small family environment. When Rodolpho and Marco arrive as well, the tensions that were already there are amplified and new tensions appear because of them. Another reason why all of these tensions develop is hat the characters in the play don’t know how to speak for themselves. Even with all of these tensions already there more of them develop when Rodolpho and Marco stay at Eddies place. Probably the biggest tension within the group is between Eddie and Rodolpho. Eddie thinks that Rodolpho is only going out with Catherine to get his papers so that he can live in America.

“Katie, he’s only bowin’ to his passport.”

This isn’t the only thing that worries Eddie about Rodolpho. Eddie also thinks that Rodolpho is gay.

“If you came in the house and you didn’t know who was singin, you wouldn’t be looking for him, you’d be looking for her.”

There’s also a tension between Beatrice and Catherine as Beatrice feels that Catherine should stop acting like such a child around Eddie.

“But 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”

Eddies problem with Catherine and Rodolpho is that he’s jealous. He feels that he doesn’t see her enough, he feels pushed out. He also feels threatened about Rodolpho's influence over Catherine. He’s worried for Catherine and he doesn’t trust Rodolpho. Usually Eddie’s advice is taken without question but now it isn’t because of Rodolpho. This is causing a lot of tension within the house. Also there is a tension due to the fact that Eddie has knowledge but Beatrice and Catherine don’t.

The characters within this play find it difficult to communicate with each other, which cause’s problems. By far the two people that find it most difficult to communicate their feelings and emotions towards each other are Eddie and Beatrice. The fact that they are very inarticulate leads to misunderstandings and problems within the household. Often the characters in the play don’t speak for themselves and so don’t get across what they want to. This lack of communication helps to create the atmosphere of the play. Catherine is very physical with Eddie as that is how she gets her emotion across to Eddie. Beatrice and Eddies intimacy also comes through with little touches and so is very physical just like Catherine and Eddie. The reason that Eddie can’t convey his emotions to other people through talking is because he doesn’t understand his own emotions. So although most of the characters in the play don’t express themselves very well by talking and other ways like that, they do however convey some of their emotion through physical contact.

The use of stage directions in the play is very important as they help to convey the characters emotions, which you wouldn’t pick up just by reading the speech from the characters.

“He looks at her as though already she had divulged something publicly.”

This is because the characters in the play are not used to showing emotion except maybe in their body language.

“[He is affected by her, but smiles his emotion away.]”

This quote from one of the stage directions shows that Eddie has (to an extent) an inability to fully convey his emotions to others and feels that he has to hide them. Without this stage direction we would not have known what he was feeling. The stage directions help to show the emotion that the character has, whether they are happy, sad, angry ect.

The stage directions also help to determine the atmosphere of the scene. The use of stage directions adds more depth to the characters by knowing how they act and are thinking instead of what they are saying.

“[He has bent the rolled paper and it suddenly tears in two]”

If it weren’t for the stage directions we wouldn’t have known how frustrated/angry that Eddie was and the boxing lesson that was about to follow wouldn’t have been as effective.

When looking at this play I have found that Arthur Miller has tried to put the play together in such a way to make it appeal to a wide audience. The similarities to a Greek Tragedy make the play more enjoyable to read and the use of stage directions play a big part in the play whether it comes to simply showing what the character is doing or if it is revealing a hidden emotion. All of this combined helps us to understand the experiences of the characters in Act One of ‘A View From The Bridge’.