Alfieri introduces the characters to us and tells us how Eddie's fate is inevitable he tells us by saying “powerless as I and watched it runs its bloody course”. This tells us Eddie is a tragic hero and he is fated to die. As chorus Alfieri knows what is going to happen, but even so he tries to stop it, 'she can't marry you, can she?' He also sees Eddie’s real feelings and tries to relate to the audience 'there is too much love for the niece' and without the lawyer scenes it becomes difficult to understand the subtext. For example you wouldn't know why Eddie wants to see Rodolfo boxing, to compare his masculinity.
Alfieri being a chorus shows that Arthur Miller has used Aristotelian classic tragedy elements by having a chorus. Aristotle says that the protagonist has to be someone the audience can relate to and Arthur Miller has also done this and by doing this the audience will feel better about themselves because they can say that at least they haven't done things that bad. Arthur Miller structures the play so that every scene has a mini-climax that Alfieri comments on and then there is a final climax which leads to the death of the protagonist.
Tension is built up by the character’s action as well as the words they say. Just as when "Marco raises the chair over his head”, the head of Eddie as though the chair was weapon this also creates tension of the thought of what could happen next. The main way in which tension is created is by the characters speaking and building up anticipation when “Eddie says don't pity me, come on, throw it”. This builds tension and is this going to lead into a real a fight. “Eddie faint’s with his left hand and lands with his right”, this also increases the atmosphere around them and increases the excitement.
Miller chooses to structure the play this way because it is effective in the way in creating an atmosphere, tension and excitement. The audience feels more involved in the play and makes them want to carry on reading or watching also this sort of structure makes the audience wonder what happens next.
Several Aristotelian elements are used in this tragedy, one of them is ‘universal truths’, this means that themes and ideas are relevant and informative for the audience watching.
Having a “Protagonist”, Eddie, who has a “Fatal flaw” because of his “Hubris” pride which makes him ignorant and blind to see the truths? Another Aristotelian element is the downfall of the protagonist, which ends in a sense of waste and wasted potential, which will restore the right order and it will contain a chorus who will comment on the action of the characters and speech and inform the audience. Arthur Miller also uses didactic teaching; didactic teaching in Aristotle’s play means to teach the audience about the moral of the play.
Eddie is the lead character which has great potential respect in modern tragedy and audience can relate and understand what he is going through. This is how Aristotelian opinion relates to Millers play Eddie is not a great man, with great stature, you know this by the fact he is a working man and has to work to earn a living so naturally so naturally he’s not wealthy. If Eddie was king then the audience could not really relate to him and the country would start thinking, those sort of things were Ok. People look up to the people with higher status. These sorts of things about Eddie are effective because the audience are more capable to relate to him as Eddie is a normal person with family issues. Which means it could happen to any of the members of the audience. It helps the audience to react to the play by slowly gathering information.
At the beginning of the play the scene is described on the stage this description of the area of where the acting is going to take place is how the audience or readers get to display or imagine it to be like in their minds. This also makes the audience want to know what each different scene and objects on the stage are used for. What each different object represent, for example “a portable phonograph”, might represent the love and romance between Catherine and Rodolfo. Straight after Alfieri is giving an insight on all the characters involved within the play.
Aristotle thought that to make a good tragedy the action of the play must have “Unity of time and place” where action and the play should be located in one specific location place and over a short time. Arthur Miller uses “unity of time and place” to show what the characters are doing and what’s going through their minds. I think that Arthur has achieved “unity of place and time” because we see how characters use one specific place to show how they feel and they used that well in their speech to make audience know how they feel for example Catherine is under control and hardly socialize. He uses these sorts of techniques to emphasis how characters expression are.
Aristotle thought that all tragedies should have a main point in the play. Where the tragedy takes place for example in “A View from the Bridge”, the tragedy takes place is when the immigration officer’s take Rodolfo and Marco away, at this point you realise that one way or another there is no way Eddie will be able to continue leading a normal life and that there is no chance of Eddie surviving without losing his dignity and respect on the street. Aristotle’s “universal truths” shows the audience that they have picked up the theme and idea raised in the play of Eddie having sexual feelings for Catherine unjust relationship.
One of the key themes of the play is honour, pride which is another reason for his downfall. From the end of Act 1 you can tell from Marco’s threat by using the chair, that Marco is showing his muscularity and giving hints to Eddie about his strength and that he will not take this lying down. Throughout the play you learn that Marco isn’t a man that you should mess with and that he will eventually get his revenge.
The theme and techniques raised by the law is that there are two kinds of law. One is natural law, natural law is used by the people to solve there problems and the other one is constitutional law. This is used by the government to keep people under control. The differences between the laws are results of conflict between Natural and Constitutional.
To emphasise this quote “justly shot by unjust men” this quote suggests that although the men were justly shot by the Natural law they were unjust men by the Constitutional law.
Nature of justice teaches the audience that people who do things by the Natural law have a completely different set of rules then to a Constitutional based area. You get a feeling of the conflict between the laws when Marco says “in my country he would be dead by now. He would not live this long.” This extract suggests that at the time in Sicily people who betrayed there family or people in there community would have been killed.
The theme of family relationships is very important because this is probably the main reason of the protagonist’s downfall. We learn from family relationships, that a member of a family cannot fall in love with another person within the family especially when one of them is married. In the case of “A View from the Bridge” Eddie is married to Beatrice and therefore there is no chance of Eddie marrying Catherine, his niece. Also Catherine doesn’t love Eddie as a lover, only as an uncle. “You want something else Eddie and you can never have her!” This quote suggest that Eddie is sexually and emotionally attracted to Catherine and that he will never have what he wants, Beatrice knows what he wants and knows that he can’t have her.
The theme love in the play is very complicated and that is when things start to go wrong for Eddie. There is actually two type of love in the play to be understood here. One type of love is the sort of love between you and a member of your family. Love within the family is very complicated, because you shouldn’t love someone so much that you can’t let go of them, this sort of love usually causes many problems. Then there is the romantic love, which is the sort of love between a man and his wife. This kind of love is sexually, emotionally and mentally, very hard to get over. This sort of love cannot happen between Eddie and Catherine. “Everyman’s got somebody that he loves, heh?... But sometimes… there’s too much… and it goes where it mustn’t… there’s two much love for the niece?” This quote suggests that Eddie loves Catherine to much and it is not the love that should be between them and that it is becoming obsessive.
Revenge is an important theme which leads to Eddie’s death. At the near end to the play, when Eddie turns in Marco and Rodolfo. Marco shouts out “That one! He killed my children! That one stole food from my children!” and every one in the crowd and the community hear Marco and think that Eddie is a traitor to his family. This is one of the reasons Eddie wants revenge. Eddie is stubborn and he wants to be respected and the only way is by Marco saying sorry in front of the whole neighbourhood. ‘I want my name.” this emphasises the fact he wants his status in the community. We learn from the theme revenge it could end up very bad for the person who wants revenge. It makes you do things that you wouldn’t do in the right state of mind. “Eddie lunges with the knife. Marco grabs his arm, turning the blade inwards and pressing it home.” This quote that Eddie would do anything to get his pride back and that he would rather stab someone then admit that he was in the wrong.
I think that the teaching of the play are very effective today because the play is “Universal” which means that anyone can relate to it. We learn from our mistakes in this case we learn from the protagonists mistake and so that we don’t make the same mistake in our own life. It teaches the audience that you should keep family problem within the family and don’t trust people outside your family or you’ll end up like Vinnie Bolzano. I have learnt from the play that you should always remember the dangers of love. This can make life really nasty for you. Also you should take good advice from all the people around you and don’t ignore it, which was exactly what Eddie did which lead to his inevitable death and don’t be stubborn with a lot of male pride.
The conflict between Natural and Constitutional law in “A View from Bridge” are still relevant today because it still goes on in today’s world. For example Natural law uses emotions to kill people and the government uses constitutional law to stop people by using the police. I think that “A View from the Bridge” has been a very good tragedy and has a good structure so people can learn the moral of the play.
I would class “A View from the Bridge” as an excellent classic tragedy because it has all the Aristotelian elements for a classic tragedy. One of the main ways of being a classic tragedy is that it has to be didactic and “A View from the Bridge” is very didactic with a chorus which keeps you informed and explained what is going on so that the audience are always one step ahead of the play. Also a classic tragedy is “Universal truth” so it can relate to anyone, people can watch the play a century later and still learn from it.
By Ajmahal Ali 10R