‘I could have finished the whole story that afternoon. It wasn’t as though there was a mystery to unravel. I could see every step coming like a dark figure walking down a hall to a certain door.’-Alfieri page 50
Alfieri knew where Eddie was heading and he knew how it was going to end but he is powerless to stop it.
The bridge can also be viewed as the connection between the Sicilian culture and the American culture. In this play the Sicilian codes of life come into serious conflict with the American codes of life. The Italian characters have to accept a compromise and begin to understand that they have to sometimes “settle for half”. This conflict also expresses the difficulties faced by those immigrants coming to America and having to live with new rules as opposed to their old ones. Miller uses Alfieri to help the audience understand the Sicilian way of life and how it conflicts with the American way of life.
Alfieri can also be viewed as the symbolic bridge between American law and Italian law. He gives his perspective from his position on the bridge or meeting ground between Italian and American cultures.
Designed as play to be performed ‘A View From the Bridge’ involves the audience to a certain extent. ‘A View From the Bridge’ is a very emotional play with a lot of tension and so Miller had to write the play to create a balance. He does this by using calm scenes between those of high tension. After the tense scene where Eddie kisses Rudolpho, Miller slightly eases the tension by having a calm scene with Alfieri following this. The main method for easing tension is the chorus figure. The scenes featuring Alfieri are usually those of low tension and so he is used to create balance and control the audience’s emotions.
Miller uses the character of Alfieri as the chorus character for a number of reasons. The audience respect his opinion as he holds a respected position in society (As in he is a lawyer), and he seems to possess this uncanny knowledge of events which makes him reliable. Alfieri is also a likeable character and one can empathise with his character.
In most of the scenes involving Alfieri he develops the action, moving time forwards and setting the new scene and developing situation. Miller uses the character of Alfieri to give the audience subtle clues as what is to come next. When the story of Vinnie Bolzano has been told, the audience know that this story is being told for a reason and this reason is only apparent by the end of the play. Eddie becomes the Vinnie Bolzano character by the end of the play. This is another journey between past and present that could be the ‘bridge´ of the play.
Alfieri is used to express other characters thoughts and opinions. He conveys their feelings and makes the audience empathize with the other characters. It is during the first scene in Alfieri’s office where the main themes of the play evolve. We learn that this play is about love and ethics and how they come into conflict with each other. Eddie harbours these lustful feelings for his niece, which he knows is wrong. However he does not want Catharine to be with Rudolpho either. He is caught in a moral dilemma. Should he leave Catherine to be with Rudolpho or should he report him to immigration?
He consults Alfieri for help, and Alfieri tells Eddie that the only legal way to stop Rudolpho and Catherine being with each other is to report Rudolpho to immigration. It could be said that Alfieri is sealing Eddie’s fate by telling him this.
As a chorus character Alfieri knows what is going to happen and even though he can not intervene he does try his best to stop things getting out of hand. He also sees Eddie’s feelings and relates them to the audience.
‘A man works hard, he brings up a child, sometimes it’s a niece and he never realizes it, but throughout the years-there is too much love for the daughter, there is too much love for the niece’.-Alfieri page 48
The scene where Eddie challenges Rudolpho’s masculinity would not have been clear if the scene with Alfieri had not preceded it. The audience would not have known why Eddie was doing what he did.
The next scene is the last scene where Alfieri is seen in his office with Eddie. This scene helps to clarify things as the audience, as with Alfieri’s help, they can see what Eddie is feeling. In this scene Alfieri emphasises that there is more than the law written on paper.
He knows about both Italian law and American law and states to Eddie that he will be breaking Italian law if he were to report Rudolpho.
Miller uses Alfieri to express the different notions of law and justice in the play. Miller presents the Italian-American world of Red Hook in which the two codes come into conflict. The bridge between American law and Sicilian law and how they differ is very important. In Sicily there is code of law known as Omerta, which is notably different to American official law. Omerta is a code of silence about criminal activity and this is practised in Sicily. Alfieri is aware of both and this is why he advises Eddie not to report Rudolpho to immigration, as he knows this is in direct opposition to Omerta and is in some ways worse than breaking the official law. All of the law is not in a book, which makes justice a lot more complicated. As Alfieri says in the penultimate scene, ‘Only God makes justice’.
In Red Hook, harbouring Italian workers and relatives who have come to work in America is seen as just by the Italian-American community but is still illegal in the eyes of the law. Reporting illegal immigrants is considered an unjust or bad thing by the community, even though it furthers the interests of the law. When Alfieri says that justice is very important there, he is not referring to state or legal justice. Miller uses Alfieri to give the audience an insight into the Sicilian ethics and culture.
Alfieri also explains to the audience the compromise the community has made, half accepting the rule of law, and half living with their own codes. The Sicilian community used to be very unruly and violent and settled disputes and vendettas the way they wanted to with total disregard for the American law. This was the mob law practiced by Italian-American mafia gangsters like Al Capone. However Alfieri states that the American system of law has now been accepted as in they settle for half. When this statement is repeated at the end of the play, he adapts the statement to ‘most of the time now we settle for half’. This means that there are still violent resolutions of arguments and conflicts which show that the Italian concept of justice still remains in America.
