“You’ll never see him no more, a guy do a thing like that? How’s he gonna show his face?”
The problem for Eddie is that he needs to be seen as a “real” man with a good name who is respected but because of his attraction to his niece, Catherine, he allows himself to feel jealous of her lover, Rodolfo, and is ready to risk everything to stop them being together.
Eddie has a clear and simple vision of what it means to be a man and he reacts with hostility and aggression to any other character in the play that either challenges him and his ideas or who does not show any signs of what he considers to be manly. Eddie considers a man to be someone who looks after and is the leader of the family. At the very beginning of the play we get an idea of the position of the three members of the “family” and the relationships between them. The women stay at home and Eddie goes out to work. When he comes home from work the women are waiting for him. Beatrice, for example, is in the kitchen preparing food and Catherine almost straightaway goes to get him a beer. He likes to see himself as the head of the house and whatever he says goes. He tells Beatrice off when she tries to stand up to him when they are talking about Catherine’s new job,
“You lived in a house all your life, what do you know about it. You never worked in your life.”
It is important to Eddie that he sees himself as the protector of the family. For example, he is very proud of the way he has brought up Catherine when her mother died. Even though he disapproves of Rodolfo and is jealous of him he defends him against Mike and Louie’s jokes because he has taken him into his house and his protection, “He’s a kid yet, y’know? He’s just a kid that’s all”. Later in the play when Beatrice is complaining that they don’t sleep together anymore Eddie tells her, “I do what I feel like doin’ or what I don’t feel like doin’”. He even uses his idea of how a family should be when he is trying to make out that he didn’t inform on Marco and Eddie. When Beatrice does not believe what he is saying about why the immigration men came he says to her, “a wife’s supposed to believe her husband”. All of these quotes by Eddie show that he is constantly trying to reinforce his role as the dominant figure in the family.
In spite of Eddie wanting to be the head of the house and the man of the family, it gets more and more obvious during the play that things are not quite right. Early on in the play Beatrice, his wife, looks at him, “into his eyes” and says, ” I’m just worried about you, that’s all I’m worried”. Later on she asks him, “When am I goin’ to be a wife again, Eddie?” He is not fulfilling his obligations as a man and husband to Beatrice. The reason she is worried is that he seems to be more interested in Catherine than in her. He comments on everything Catherine does and wants to control it. He wants to tell her what to wear and even how to walk. He hates to think that she might be attractive to other men. When he is not obeyed he shows signs of aggression. When, for example, he is talking to Catherine about her clothes and the way she behaves at the beginning of the play, he says,
“Now don’t aggravate me Katie, you’re walking wavy”.
When the two illegal immigrants (Marco and Rodolfo) arrive, it leads to problems and adds to the tensions which already exist. In different ways they challenge Eddie – his ideas of what it is to be manly, his dominant position in the family and bring to a head the problems with his feelings towards Catherine.
Rodolfo, the younger brother, doesn’t conform to Eddie’s idea of what qualities a man should have. Even worse than that, it looks as though he is going to lose his Katie to him and this a challenge that he can’t back away from. The stage directions at one point say about Eddie that, “he is sizing up Rodolfo and there is a concealed suspicion”. Beatrice thinks that this hostility is because of jealousy and his feelings for Catherine. Eddie though convinces himself that it is because Rodolfo is exploiting her to get a permit to stay in America.
Eddie finds everything about Rodolfo “unmanly” and he uses this as ammunition against him. For example, when Rodolfo sings, Eddie doesn’t like the way he does it. He says that Rodolfo even sounds like a woman,
“You didn’t know who was singing, you wouldn’t be looking for him, you’d be looking for her.”
The way Rodolfo looks doesn’t match up with the qualities Eddie considers to be manly. He calls Rodolfo a “Blondie” and “Platinum Hair”. He thinks that it is a female quality to care what you look like and to enhance your image. Eddie tries to show up Rodolfo on several occasions. He tries to humiliate him during the boxing lesson and he physically kisses Rodolfo in front of Catherine. He says this about Rodolfo at another point in the play,” I mean he looked so sweet there, like an angel, you could kiss him he was so sweet.”
Also Eddie doesn’t approve of the Rodolfo’s activities. He associates them with women, such as Rodolfo dancing and cooking. He also tries to imply that Rodolfo is a homosexual. He says this to make Catherine go off him. He says, “The guy ain’t right” and ‘he’s a weird’ He said this because he doesn’t think that Rodolfo is a real man.
Catherine, though, seems to find Rodolfo very attractive and “manly”. The stage directions say that she is “enthralled” by him. She is attracted to Rodolfo by the things that Eddie finds unmanly. She loves his singing, likes to dance with him, and also loves the fact that he cooks and can make clothes. In the end she goes into the bedroom with him (although we don’t know what actually happens there) and wants to marry him.
Marco is what Eddie seems to think a man should be like. He says about him,” Marco goes around like a man; nobody kids Marco”. He is strong and hardworking – unlike Rodolfo. The other longshoremen Mike and Louie call him “a regular bull”. He has a family that he supports and that he hopes to send for when he has enough money. The qualities that Eddie thinks are manly, though, lead eventually to violence, hostility and aggression. He is protective of his brother and this leads to the confrontation with Eddie in the chair-lifting contest where he warns him off bullying Rodolfo. Like Eddie he needs to keep his “good name” and will kill to defend it. He says about Eddie after he has ratted on him to the immigration service,” In my country he would be dead by now.”
The climax of the play comes when neither Eddie nor Marco will back down after Marco has accused Eddie in public of informing on him to the immigration service. They both seem to prize their good name more than anything else - even if they have to fight to the death to defend it. It is funny that it is Rodolfo, who Eddie thinks is not a real man, who tries to make a compromise to stop the fight. He says to Eddie, “It is my fault Eddie. Everything. It was wrong that I did not ask your permission. I kiss your hand.” Just before the final fight he begs them both to stop, “No, Marco, please. Eddie, please, he has children! You will kill a family.”
All through the play Eddie has not been able to admit that the real reason for him being hostile to Rodolfo and anyone else who likes Catherine is that he wants her for himself. Even when Beatrice tells him to his face at the end he won’t admit it. This drives him mad. The stage directions say, “His fists clench his head as though it will burst”. It has driven him to do the worst thing you can do in Red Hook – to be a snitch. The only way out he thinks is to challenge Marco and to get his name back. He says to Marco, “I want my name back”.
In the end Eddie dies not knowing why he was so angry. When Catherine says that she never wanted to do anything bad to him he says to her,” Then why…?” Eddie dies and Marco will go to prison because they couldn’t do anything but use violence – they had to follow the masculine code of honour. Alfieri, the lawyer and narrator in the play, pities and admires Eddie because he was willing to die to defend his good name and to get back “respect”. He says about Eddie, “even as I know how wrong he was, and his death useless…I confess that something perversely pure calls to me from his memory, for he allowed himself to be wholly known.”
Manliness, aggression and hostility are themes that are linked throughout the play. They can maybe be admired but in the end, as Alfieri says, compromise is the only way, “Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better”.
