To what extent does Miller want us to agree with Alfieri’s reactions at the end of the play?
Kay Bennett
11JE
Mr Rose
In A View From The Bridge, Arthur Miller aimed to write a modern tragedy involving ‘the common man’. He wrote in 1949 for the New York Times that ‘the common man is an apt a subject from tragedy in it’s highest sense as kings were’. He thought that tragedy ‘is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly’ and that most of us are willing to remain passive when our dignity and our image of our rightful status is questioned. But some among us ‘act against the scheme of things that degrades them’ and question what ‘has previously been unquestioned’. Miller thought that the common man was capable of such a process of questioning and chose to demonstrate this by creating a character with the spirit to do so - Eddie Carbone. Miller’s definition of tragedy shows us that he wished to enlighten and spark discussion about the human condition with the play.
Miller choose to close the play with a speech by Alfieri. Alfieri takes the role of commentator in the play. He is wise but unable to change the course of events, similar to the chorus in a Greek tragedy. He explains the story to the audience without really participating. Ultimately, Alfieri can only look on as the events ‘run [their] bloody course’, because Eddie has an intrinsic ‘tragic flaw’ in his character which makes him unable to ‘settle for half’ as he has been able to. On page 50 he says ‘I could see every step coming, step after step, like a dark figure walking towards a certain door. I knew where he was heading for, I knew where he was going to end. […] I was powerless to stop it.’ Alfieri doesn’t affect the events in the play but he isn’t detached from the character as they come from the same community. Alfieri comes form Red Hook like Eddie does so he he has an understanding of the way the culture is Red Hook is an Italian-American community and there is a visible conflict between the two cultures. In Alfieris speech at the beginning he says that ‘In Sicily, from where their fathers came, the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks where beaten.’ This foreshadows the incident later in the play where Eddie tries to find a law to stop ‘a guy which he ain’t right (Rodolpho) can go to work and many a girl (Catherine) and finds that there isn’t one. Eddie does not accept this and takes the law into his own hands and tries to execute his own form of justice, which ends in tragedy. Miller gives us the impression that Alfieri is omniscient and has a deep understanding of the characters and their influences which gives him gravitas. It seems that Miller wants his opinion on the situation to influence our opinion.
