The Carbone’s have just finished their dinner and are chatting peacefully but tension is obviously in the air. Argument starts when Eddie makes an offensive remark about life when ‘submarines’ or illegal immigrants go back home to their wives ‘I betcha there’s plenty of surprises sometimes when those guys get back there, heh?’ It is aimed towards Marco, to make him unsure whether or not he has made the right choice to leave his wife and family in Sicily. Unfortunately for Eddie, his comment fails to bewilder Marco who calmly tries to explain to Eddie exactly how strict life is in Italy. Eddie cannot get what he wants (Catherine) and he is trying to criticise everyone in a bid to make them uncertain about themselves. I think that Arthur Miller portrays that Marco is a real man as he explains the issue raised. By doing this Marco shows dignity and masculinity making Eddie look pathetic and humiliated, when in actual fact it was Eddie’s objective to humiliate Marco.
Eddie tries to provoke Rodolpho by saying that America is just as strict as Italy. But what he really means is that Rodolpho shouldn’t take out Catherine to whom he is a fatherly figure; in doing so he is undermining Rodolpho and trying to represent him as being disrespectful. As it happens to be so, that in Italy, tradition has it that to take a girl out you must have permission from the girl’s father. Eddie implies this to Rodolpho and that he must have permission for Catherine’s hand.
All along Catherine felt that she was in debt to Eddie for feeding her, bringing her up and making sacrifices just for her to do well in life and not to suffer the hardships that he faced. But Catherine begins to see a different side of Eddie brought out by his jealousy, a side that she hasn’t seen nor likes. Catherine shows her assertiveness by asking Rodolpho to dance to the record ‘Paper Dolls’. Her shift in loyalty is illustrated by doing this but in a way it is her revenge and defiance to Eddie as she already knows that he will condemn to such a thing. When Rodolpho refuses Beatrice intervenes and encourages Rodolpho to dance and by doing this she shows great disobedience to Eddie, creating his aggravation to increase and the play’s tension to go sky-high.
From the very beginning, Eddie is trying to prove that Rodolpho’s not a real man and that he is gay. The significance of this is that it would provide evidence to everyone around him that Rodolpho is only chasing Catherine not for love but for her body and more importantly the citizenship. As Eddie speaks he slowly starts to twist a newspaper more and more until it rips in half representing Eddie’s full anger at a peak. On the stage this would be a very effective visual device as it, without the need of words helps the audience to understand the rage inside Eddie. The visual device is also effective as Eddie shows his suppressed feelings physically.
Eddie convinces Rodolpho to teach him how to box. They start slowly but Eddies boxes Rodolpho too hard and he falls to the floor. Rodolpho is not weakly hurt nevertheless all the other characters in the play start to realise Eddies hatred and jealousy of Rodolpho and how far Eddie will go to exhibit this wrath and fury. Marco goes over to Eddie and in a seemingly pleasant manner asks him if he can raise a chair above his head. The two of them elevate chairs and Marco holds his chair directly over Eddies head. As well as showing superior strength he does this to intimidate Eddie and end him from trying to torment his younger brother Rodolpho.
In my opinion I think that Arthur Miller is using ‘A View from the Bridge’ to illustrate that tragedy is eternal and that it will roam the earth for centuries to come. Miller is also portraying that there cannot be drama without tension or quarrel. An example of a tragedy is ‘Macbeth’ as Macbeth is influenced by outsiders so similarly in ‘A View From The Bridge’ Eddie is influenced by his repressed love and thus ultimately his death.
