At the beginning of the story, Eddie is portrayed as being a ‘family man’ as he arrives home from work and enters the house to an excitable greeting from Catherine, his orphaned niece. His use of the rocker displays dominance and power within the household. It is his chair; no one else sits in it. The way the rocker is positioned shows that it is important, because he can overlook everything that happens inside the room. His conversations are parental, showing an overprotective side towards Catherine. He provides fatherly advice for Catherine, although she isn’t his daughter. The consequence of this behaviour is that he is greatly over protective of Catherine.
In the middle of the story Eddie should seem to be distant because he doesn’t want to believe that Catherine and Rodolfo are in love and he can’t express his feelings in words, only in physical actions e.g. “…unconsciously twisting the newspaper…” and “…lightly boxing…”
The end of the story leads to tragedy; Eddie is cut off from the family since he kissed Catherine in possession, and then kissed Rodolfo to try and prove that he has greater power and strength. Catherine has a change of heart towards Eddie “He’s a rat! He belongs in the sewers!” Eddie’s speech, like Catherine and Beatrice, is ‘Conversational Brooklynese’ because they lack the vocabulary and education or to find the words to express their feelings. This may be because they lack the language to express themselves fully or because they do not want to put their ideas into words.
Eddie and Beatrice’s relationship is deteriorating because Eddie is jealous of Rodolfo. Beatrice is aware of a deeper, more disturbing reason for Eddie’s protectiveness for Catherine. It soon becomes clear that she is unhappy about Eddie’s attitude to his niece and she is able to persuade him to allow Catherine to start work when she gets offered one. Beatrice repeats the words “What do you want from me?” over again. “When am I going to be a wife again, Eddie?” She wants to know if he still loves her because they haven’t talked or had any physical or sexual relationships which means that part of their relationship with each other has broken down, and despite challenging Eddie over this, Beatrice is unable to make him face why this might be, let alone make him admit his weakness to himself, as a result of this she remains powerless to help him. Beatrice realized she had to tell Eddie that he wants “somethin’ else, Eddie, and you can never have her!”
This key dialogue within the play not only causes Catherine and Eddie’s relationship to deteriorate, but because Eddie will not allow her to try to achieve adult hood; he is possessive and controlling. It is this urge to protect Catherine, to keep her from discovering her independence, that makes him particularly sensitive to the presence of Marco and especially Rodolfo, to whom Catherine becomes attracted.
Catherine sometimes sits on the edge of the bath, in her underwear, talking to Eddie while he shaves. This shows how close they once were but also hints at the inappropriate crossing of boundaries, that leads to the eventual break up in their relationship. But, Catherine finding work, her growing attraction towards Rodolfo, which leads to their planned marriage, brings out an increasingly aggressive reaction in Eddie that starts to break the family apart. Eddie is suspicious of Rodolfo’s interest in Catherine, believing that he seeks to marry her in order to gain the American Citizenship. It becomes clear to Catherine that Rodolfo’s intentions towards her are motivated by his love for her. Eddie’s dislike not to be Catherine’s affections, as well as his desire for her, which forces him to talk with Alfieri for advice and which, even after Alfieri has told him to let events follow their natural course. This pushes Eddie to betray Eddie and Rodolfo. At the end, Catherine says “Rat in the sewer” and is always shouting which shows how much their relationship has disappeared. She becomes more rebellious and independent and Beatrice becomes increasingly frustrated as she realizes how the events will go.
Eddie’s aggression towards Rodolfo is shown in the boxing scenes. Eddie’s main problems with Rodolfo are that he cooks; he sings; he’s blonde; he sews; he dances and seems to be extremely feminine overall. To Eddie all the talents that Rodolfo is showing, points to only one thing in his eyes: he’s gay.
Most of the time Eddie doesn’t know all the facts and jumps to conclusions, he refuses to see sense “his eyes were like tunnels”. Eddie cannot be persuaded otherwise, he is self centred and doesn’t care whose feelings he hurts as long as he proves his point.
Eddie and Rodolfo are completely different. Physically Eddie has brown hair, quite well built, straightforward and simple where as Rodolfo has blonde hair, lighthearted, good looking and light on his feet; their language, even though English is Rodolfo’s second language, he is able to express himself more passionately and imaginatively then Eddie. Rodolfo and Eddie’s attitudes differ because of the generation gap and Eddie has more experience about things, he’s older and ‘wiser’. Rodolfo asks a lot of questions about things and wants to get a job, buy a motorcycle, and have dreams and fantasies of his future life.
Marco and his structure, in comparison to Eddie, is similar in the fact that they both show signs of bulk and muscle and both enjoy to work hard for their family. That is why they got along in the beginning. Their interaction with each other clearly shows that Eddie preferred talking to Marco rather than Rodolfo.
At the end of act 1, Marco gives Eddie a physical threat with “the chair raised like a weapon over Eddie’s head”. Marco shows Eddie ‘how to’ lift the chair and Eddie tries but fails again and again. Marco tried to scare Eddie but he has to get the message first. Marco lifts the chair over his head and gives Eddie a glare of warning and triumph. Eddie’s grin disappears as he finally gets the message.
At the end of act 5 shows just how far Eddie was determined to go to try and get his name back from Marco. Eddie gets killed by Marco because he turned both Marco and Rodolfo into the Immigration Bureau. This act of betrayal on members of his own extended family allows the tragedy, which Alfieri foresaw at the beginning and he knew he wouldn’t be able to prevent these things happening. Though despite Alfieri’s best efforts, Marco is set upon getting revenge for his betrayal, while Eddie is determined to maintain his reputation and honour. Eddie felt that the only way he could get his respect from the people back was to try and kill Marco. They finally come face to face in view of the neighbourhood and the unpreventable tragedy happens. Marco was stronger and it was Eddie’s own knife and arrogance that killed him. This scene is where Catherine and Beatrice admit that they really do care for Eddie.
Thank you for writing to me Albert, I hope my advice aids your performance in the play.
Yours sincerely,
