How far can Eddie Carbone be seen
responsible for his own downfall?
Eddie Carbone is one of the main characters in Arthur Millers ‘A View From A Bridge’. Within the production Eddie is seen as from a warm loving man into an over-protective uncle, jealous over his Nieces own love for an immigrant known as Rodolfo, thus turning into a love triangle and leading to the death of himself. Was this his own fault or was it due to the actions of someone else?
Eddie Carbone’s Tragic Hero Qualities:
Within the play ‘A View From The Bridge’ Eddie Carbone after being killed can be related as being a ‘tragic hero’. At the beginning this can be seen in the way he cares for his niece as if she was his own love, when trying to prevent her from taking a job with a big plumbing company he uses quotes such as “What job? She’s gonna finish school” and “I want you to be in a nice office. Maybe a lawyers” as relating to Alfieri, the plays own lawyer. This to begin with can be one of the reasons to it being down to Eddie himself who caused his downfall, as when Rodolfo comes into the limelight he again over protects and in a way gets jealous when the two fall in love. Eddie immediately presumes that Rodolfo, who in fact is one of many illegal immigrants from Sicily, is only getting together with Catherine so he can get married and become a true citizen. In doing so this rages Eddie and without thinking calls upon the immigration office to take the family, who is spending there stay at his own home, away. Because of this Marco, one of the other immigrants, gets into a scuffle with Eddie resulting in Marco turning Eddies own knife upon him and killing him. This could be one of the first reasons relating Eddie to a tragic hero as he died for what he believed in. Before all of this Beatrice his wife explains to him what he had done and what could happen to the Sicilians, heroically Eddie tries to throw the lead off the immigrants and although failing to turn the tide back, this is seen as one of the more nice things he did.
