Throughout A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller creates and sustains dramatic tension to keep the audience's attention. He also uses dramatic tension to guide and provoke the audience's thoughts and responses towards A View from the Bridge

Authors Avatar

Discussing the importance of dramatic tension

within A View from the Bridge

        Throughout A View from the Bridge, Arthur Miller creates and sustains dramatic tension to keep the audience’s attention. He also uses dramatic tension to guide and provoke the audience’s thoughts and responses towards A View from the Bridge. He does this by using different techniques, for example, posing unanswered questions in the audience’s mind and using dramatic pauses. Arthur Miller also controls the amount of tension between the characters to create highs and lows in the plot on stage, but in fact could effectively raise the awareness of the audience of the underlying tension suppressed between the characters.

        A View from the Bridge in told a series of flashback in the point of view of Alfieri, the lawyer and the narrator of the play. In the beginning of the play, he already mentions that the course of events are not pleasant in his opening speech:

        “…as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course.”

This prepares the audience for the opening of the play, in which we immediately the primary cause of tension in the play, Eddie’s over-protection of Catherine when they discuss a job opportunity as he says:

        “You’re a baby, you don’t understand these things.”

This clearly shows his underestimation of Catherine and the whole conversation shows his affection and self-inflicted responsibility for Catherine.

This continues throughout Act I despite Catherine’s growth in character, as there are many accounts of conflict between Eddie and Beatrice and between Eddie and Rodolfo over Rodolfo and Catherine’s relationship.  Eddie shows his contempt for Rodolfo by saying:

“He don’t respect you…he’s only bowin’ to his passport.”

Eddie is against Catherine and Rodolfo’s relationship, and ends up arguing with everyone over it, including his much-loved niece. He tries at every chance to criticise Rodolfo, who he doesn’t trust to be able to love Catherine like he does.

        By Act II, all the problems of the play have been set out and it reaches a climax, and different characters take different actions to solve their personal problems. For example, Eddie reports to the Immigration Bureau. He only did this on account that Alfieri had told him no law would protect Catherine against Rodolfo, so he reports Rodolfo in order to “regain” Catherine. However, the audience knows this would just result in more conflict as Catherine and Rodolfo announce their plans to marry. The audience can tell Eddie’s regret of reporting Marco and Rodolfo when he says:

        “Go up the fire escape, get them out over the back fence,”

This shows Eddie is feeling guilty as he says this before anybody knows the immigration officers are arriving and also shows his desire for Marco and Rodolfo to escape. However, his foolish action had caused Beatrice and Catherine not to trust him and has also ruined his harmony with Marco.

        At the end of the play, all the tension is released explosively. When Eddie is killed it is accepted in he audience’s mind as a conclusive ending. However, despite the fact that now no-one would disagree with Catherine and Rodolfo’s marriage, no other problems would be solved, as said by Alfieri’s final speech:

“… I know how wrong he was, and his death useless…”

This sums up Alfieri’s evaluation of the play, and also what Arthur Miller believs what the audience should have learnt from A View from the Bridge.

        Arthur Miller wrote A View from the Bridge exploring different themes and it is these themes that form the basis of the tension of the play.

        One of the themes that Arthur Miller explores is the clash between cultures. Eddie is Italian, just like Rodolfo and Marco and was an immigrant himself, but over the years he has developed to the American way of thinking. The characters’ perspectives and values are different and so affects their actions. For example, Eddie looks down upon Rodolfo’s creditable masculinity because of his ‘feminine’ skills, not just because of his American point of view but also his longshoreman’s point of view, whereas everyone else merely regards Rodolfo as talented.

        Another important aspect of the play is law and the part it plays in people’s lives. Arthur Miller explores towards the end of the play the “law in a book” and the unwritten law. He also shows the strength of the written law and at the same time how powerless the same law is in the face of a human dilemma. Eddie wants to separate Catherine and Rodolfo, and searches for a valid law to do so. He fails and eventually reports Rodolfo to immigration, taking law in his own hands. On the other hand, Marco wants revenge on Eddie for betraying him. At first, he tries to condemn Eddie by the written law, which apparently exists in the Sicilian written law. However, unable to do so using the American written law, he takes revenge out of the hands of law and into his own, killing Eddie. This contrast of law is also another example of culture clash.

Join now!

        A final theme in A View from the Bridge is the issue of justice and pride. Different characters in the play are looking for a different thing; Eddie is desperate for his “name”, reputations and pride, and Marco is desperate for justice. At the conclusion of the play, Alfieri suggests that the best solution is to compromise, as neither Eddie nor Marco had a happy ending. If they had compromised and swallowed a bit of pride, Eddie would have come to terms with Catherine’s and wouldn’t have died, and Marco would just return to Italy a free man, instead of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay