A View From the Bridge

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Did the Code of Omerta lead to the tragedy

in ‘A View from the Bridge?’

The play is set in the 1930’s in New York in a slum area called Red Hook.  We can predict this because the temporal setting is between the 1920’s and the outbreak of the war but as the war is not mentioned the setting must be late 1930’s.  It is about a family of Italian immigrants who host two illegal immigrants who are brothers.  Eddie and Beatrice have but up Catherine since she was a baby and she is now seventeen.  The play is about the changing relationships between these characters and the effect the brothers have on these relationships.  

The bridge mentioned in the title has many levels of meaning.  First, it has literal meaning as it is a real bridge; Brooklyn Bridge in New York and it joins Manhattan to Brooklyn and Red Hook which is “is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge.And it is also “the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world.”  It also has a metaphorical meaning as it represents the crossing between the ‘old world’ (Europe) and the ‘new world’ (America).  Legal immigrants ‘come over the bridge’; illegal immigrants come under the bridge’ in submarines.  A symbolic meaning would be a rite of passage for Catherine as she goes through adolescence from ‘baby’ to ‘young women’.  There is also an inferential meaning as the ‘bridge’ connects two cultures; the Americans from Manhattan and their laws to the immigrants in Brooklyn and Red Hook with their traditions and codes of behaviour.  Yet another symbolic denotation is that the Narrator, Alfieri, is also a ‘bridge’ attempting to unite the American laws with the Italian culture practices.  He has the same vantage point as someone looking from the bridge as he is a well-educated man who respects American law but is still loyal to Italian customs.  We know right from the beginning that is going to end in a tragedy because Alfieri says, I was “powerless as I watched it run its bloody course.”  Arthur Miller said that the play was a Greek tragedy and therefore concerned incestuous relationships within a family.

The protagonist of this play is Eddie Carbone; he is a longshoreman that lives with his wife, Beatrice and orphaned niece, Catherine.  He is an inarticulate character and is powerless at the end of this tragedy.  He is overprotective about Catherine which causes his eventual destruction.  Catherine is a young, intelligent, Italian girl who is very popular in her community; she is used to look up to her uncle, Eddie which is why she is upset when Eddie does not approve of Rodolpho.  Rodolpho is an illegal immigrant who the Carbone’s are hiding along with his brother Marco, Rodolpho has come to America because he wants to become an American citizen as he wants the wealth and fame that comes with a Western society.  Rodolpho seems effeminate to Eddie as he is blonde, likes to sing, cook and sew which is why Eddie tells Catherine that he is “not right” by this he is calling Rodolpho a homosexual.  Marco on the other hand has come to America to earn some money to send back to his wife and children in Italy; he is a hard-working individual who is powerful and often acts like a leader.  The chorus character is Alfieri; he is an Italian-American lawyer and the narrator of this tragedy.  He is the chorus character because he speaks directly to the audience and attempts to make clear the moral and social implications of the story.  As already mentioned Alfieri is metaphorically a part of the title as he is the bridge between Italian culture and American law.  The brothers came illegally because of the prejudice against Southern Europe because at the time most people used to stereotype that they were all gangsters.          

At the beginning of the play Catherine finds a new job as a stenographer but Eddie is worried she will be unsafe there with all the men around however Beatrice supports Catherine.  Eddie then changes the conversation to the illegal arrival of Beatrice’s cousins from Italy and tells a story of someone who snitched on an illegal immigrant.  Marco and Rodolpho, the cousins arrive; Marco is in America to earn some money for medicine as his children are sick whereas Rodolpho just wants to become an American.  Eddie seems to be worried about Catherine going out with Rodolpho, this makes Catherine upset as she does not understand what Eddie sees wrong in Rodolpho but Eddie tells her that Rodolpho only cares about becoming an American citizen.  Eddie then goes to see Alfieri to see if there is some law that will prevent Rodolpho going out with Catherine but the only law that has been broken is the fact that Rodolpho is an illegal immigrant but Eddie does not feel comfortable ‘snitching’ on the brothers.  Eddie becomes really emotional and protective about Catherine and aggressively bad-mouthing Rodolpho.  Back at home Eddie tries to make Rodolpho look weak by having a pretend boxing match with him.  Marco sensing that Eddie is picking on Rodolpho shows Eddie his strength by picking up a chair by its one leg, which is a warning to Eddie to leave his brother alone.  At the beginning of Act 2 Catherine and Rodolpho talk about getting married and moving to Italy but before they can come to a decision Eddie arrives home drunk and throws Rodolpho out of the house insisting that Catherine stay but Catherine refuses.  Eddie then phones the immigration authorities and ‘snitches’ on the brothers, when they are arrested on the street Marco bad-mouths Eddie in front of everyone on the street.  Rodolpho and Catherine are to get married and Eddie has lost Catherine and then loses Beatrice as a consequence of his loss of street credit, he attacks Marco with a knife but ends up dead.

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The Code of Omerta or the code of silence is a common attitude in Southern Italy that implies that if someone appeals to the law about his fellow man he is a ‘snitch’ and should not be called a man, in Southern Italy it often leads to death if you are the informant.  The Code of Omerta is mentioned in the ‘talk’ by Eddie before the cousins arrive; the tale of Vinny Bolzano sets the tone of the play.  This is a story of a person named Vinny who’s “family had an uncle that they were hidin' in the ...

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