Catherine has spent pretty much all her life with Eddie so she has become very attached, for example, ‘you sit on the edge of the bathtub talking to him when he’s shaving’ in his underwear’, she thinks she is just talking to him, where as Eddie thinks that she is trying to say something and it’s not. So from an early age she has been manipulated by Eddie, making him seem the only one to trust and to believe every word he says, for example, ‘I wish there was one guy you couldn’t tell me things about!’ showing that if Eddie found a guy that Eddie didn’t now bad things about he would be a good guy to go out with but, Eddie isn’t going to find any won like.
Beatrice is petrified of Eddie and he uses this to his advantage. Making Beatrice feel sorry for him when he’s being rude to her, ‘when your fathers house burnt down, I had to sleep on the floor’, I mean Beatrice’s fathers house just burnt down and Eddies moaning about having to sleep on the floor. So when Beatrice’s cousins come to America (illegally) Eddie has given them ‘the sheets of his own bed’ and if it wasn’t for him her cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, wouldn’t even be in America making a new life fore themselves, so once again as you will see through out the book Eddie comes out the hero, at least to Beatrice and Catherine.
Towards the end of the play we start to see the real Beatrice who stands up to Eddie as she starts to crack. She has figured out that Eddie has a thing for Catherine and why he wont let Catherine have a boy friend or was against her getting married,
‘BEATRICE: Eddie, for Christ’s sake its her wedding,’
She stands up to Eddie cause he is being a complete idiot.
Eddie doesn’t want anyone to have Catherine. Eddie doesn’t like Rodolpho, but Catherine likes Rodolpho, making another problem for Eddie. It is evident Catherine likes Rodolpho by the way she talks and questions him when he first arrives, quote, ‘your practically blond’ and ‘ A motorcycle’, so he’s blonde and has a motor cycle, but, Eddie is less amused,
‘CATHERINE [to BEATRICE]: He’s practically blond!
EDDIE: How’s the coffee doing?’
Or in other words, ‘get out the room and stop chatting him up’.
So since Eddie doesn’t like Catherine we all know something’s going to go wrong somewhere along the line and… it does. Well not just one thing many,
- Verbal but not obvious warnings such as
‘EDDIE: look, B., I’m just saying – he thinks she always stayed out like that.
MARCO: you come home early now, Rodolpho.
RODOLPHO [embarrassed]: all right, sure.’
Eddie’s is suggesting that Catherine never used to stay out until Rodolpho arrived.
- It starts to get physical with Eddie ‘teaching’ Rodolpho to box, it goes well until Eddie almost knocks out Rodolpho.
3. Then it all comes out at Christmas when he gets drunk and Beatrice says Catherine and Eddie are getting married, Eddie does the last thing he could possibly do, he tells the immigration office they have illegal immigrants in there house. The last person that accidentally told on illegal immigrants got pulled down the stairs, his head ‘bouncing like a coconut’ down the stairs then the family abandoning him, he was a teenager. So what’s going to happen to a forty year old man?
Marco wants to make money for his family back in Italy; Eddie uses this to his advantage, as per usual. Bossing Marco around and making Marco have a go at Rodolpho so Eddie doesn’t have to say anything. However, if Marco does anything to Eddie, Eddie can send Marco back to Italy. Later on in the book, as Eddie threatened Rodolpho without saying anything, Marco does the same thing to Eddie just after the boxing match.
‘MARCO: Here.
[He kneels, grasps, and with strain slowly raises the chair higher and higher, getting to his feet now. RODOLPHO and CATHERINE have stopped dancing as MARCO raises the chair over his head.
MARCO is face to face with Eddie, a strained tension gripping his eyes and jaw, his neck stiff, the chair raised like a weapon over EDDIES head].’
Marco is threatening Eddie, saying if you hurt my brother ill hurt you. When Eddie makes the mistake of telling on Marco and Rodolpho to the police, sparks fly as Marco plans and gets his revenge on Eddie.
After all that’s happened between Eddie, Marco, Beatrice and Rodolpho, Catherine is the least pleased with Eddie. She has pretty much discovered that Eddie has feelings for her, so plans to get away from him by marrying Rodolpho, upsetting Eddie even more but this doesn’t matter for Eddie ends up been killed by the one thing he doesn’t have a defence for his own pride.
This brings me to my conclusion, that the main character Eddie Carbone is ‘the bridge’ from ‘ a view from the bridge’. He decides what happens in his house, if Beatrice’s relatives are aloud into America, what Catherine is allowed to wear and whom she can see and if Eddie doesn’t like what Rodolpho is doing with Catherine he can and will find away to get rid off him. But, the problem with Eddie he has one major floor, this being his own pride. Which as I explained in the paragraph before ends up being the thing that kills him, the knife, which he draws against Marco, but it is turned against Eddie, as the bridge collapses.