How does Miller use Alfieri to inspire Sympathy forEddie?

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How does Miller use Alfieri to inspire Sympathy for Eddie?

How successful is he?

In his play "A View from the Bridge", Arthur Miller intends us to feel sympathy towards the protagonist, Eddie Carbone. Miller wants the audience to view Eddie positively, however Eddie displays negative personality traits like aggression, violence and over-protectiveness therefore there is a conflict between how Miller wants us to feel, that Eddie is a tragic hero, and how he actually does behave. The narrator Alfieri is deployed to often defend or explain Eddie's actions. After Eddie has shown a negative characteristic, Alfieri is deployed to get the audience back on Eddie's side. Without Alfieri, the audience would dislike Eddie and would immediately reject him. The audience's views towards Eddie are constantly shifting throughout the play.

Miller, like many playwrights, was influenced by Greek theatre. Alfieri's role is similar to the way the chorus operated in Greek tragedy because he comments on the action throughout the play. Our first impressions of Alfieri are positive. In the ancillary text, he is described as,

"a lawyer in his fifties"

which suggests that he is an educated and mature man. Alfieri is well dressed in a suit and is very well mannered. It is extremely important that the audience likes and trusts Alfieri if he is to influence the audience's views of Eddie during the play. This is why Alfieri is dressed smartly and looks experienced right at the beginning of the play. He speaks directly to the audience in an approachable and friendly way using the personal pronoun "you" which shows that he is trying to build a rapport with the audience right from the start of the play. Alfieri is articulate and trustworthy so the audience will listen to him. Miller places Alfieri's office "at the right, forestage" because he wants Alfieri to be able to communicate easily with the audience and become a bridge between the audience and the characters. In Alfieri's first speech, Eddie's past is mentioned so that the audience will understand that Eddie is a product of his cultural background. We are told that Eddie was part of an Italian community in Sicily where there were Italian family values and traditions, which Eddie was used to. Also in Sicily, there is their own code of law which meant it would have been extremely violent and brutal, there would of been no work available and many people would of been deprived and poor. This confuses Eddie when he comes to America where there was a different law. Eddie lives in,

"the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge"

which shows that he suffers poverty like all Italian Immigrants in Red Hook in Brooklyn. Eddie migrated from Sicily, where the conditions were even worse, looking for work and a better life in America, the so-called land of opportunity.

What he arrived in was a hostile and racist community towards Italian Immigrants due to lack of work and money and fear which was exacerbated by the Wall Street Crash, The Great Depression. Therefore, there was hostility in America and great economic turmoil. It was a very violent society as well,
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"Frankie Yale himself was cut precisely in half by a machine-gun on the corner of Union Street"

which may suggest why Eddie places himself as man of the house and wants total control of Catherine later in the play. We are given all this information about Eddie's background before we are actually told about him so that the audience understand and sympathise with Eddie.

When Alfieri next appears, he has to defend Eddie because he has displayed a number of negative qualities. Therefore the audience would feel quite negatively towards Eddie at this point and Miller ...

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