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A View From The Bridge

Eddie Carbone is the tragic hero of Arthur Miller's play "A View from the Bridge". Eddie is a working class man whose passions drive him to self-destruction, similar to the high-born heroes of Greek tragedies. Eddie cannot accept that his niece Catherine is attracted to Rodolpho, and decides something must be wrong with Rodolpho. He believes Rodolpho is using Catherine for citizenship. The character of Alfieri acts as the narrator and a link between the working class characters and the audience.

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Kimtuyen Tran
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563 views4 pages

A View From The Bridge

Eddie Carbone is the tragic hero of Arthur Miller's play "A View from the Bridge". Eddie is a working class man whose passions drive him to self-destruction, similar to the high-born heroes of Greek tragedies. Eddie cannot accept that his niece Catherine is attracted to Rodolpho, and decides something must be wrong with Rodolpho. He believes Rodolpho is using Catherine for citizenship. The character of Alfieri acts as the narrator and a link between the working class characters and the audience.

Uploaded by

Kimtuyen Tran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

Eddie, the tragic hero


Tragedies traditionally took as their heroes men and women of high office (kings,
queens, princesses etc) but Miller believed the ordinary man to be an appropriate
protagonist for his plays. In fact, he shows us characters who are not ordinary, an
implicit statement that there is no such thing as ordinary. The USA is a meritocracy
(at least in theory) where the power lies (again, at least in theory) with the so-called
ordinary person. Eddie is in fact from a solidly working class environment but
his passions are just as Greek (as Miller terms them) as any high-born emperor.
Like them, his fatal flaw drives him to his own self-destruction. Eddie Carbone had
never expected to have a destiny. A destiny? What does Miller mean by this?
Eddies self-denial
Eddie cannot face up to the reality that he finds Catherine (his neice and god-
daughter) attractive, and so he decides that something aint right about Rodolpho,
the man she admires. His apparently effeminate attributes (and even his stature)
seem evidence enough to Eddie that he is actually a homosexual and thus only
interested in Catherine as a means to gaining American citizenship the fact that he
is buying luxury items seems to confirm this hes here to stay, Eddie says.

Alfieri
Like Rod serling in The Twilight Zone, Alfieri acts as the narrator. His function is, in
a sense, the bridge of the title he acts as a link between out world (middle class)
and that of the working class American Italians in their enclave. The bridge is not
just the literal Brooklyn one (from which we may look down as we pass over) but a
functional one within the play itself.

Somethings lost, but somethings gained


Perhaps civilised means tamed? Yes, it means that there is less bloodshed (no
more Al Capone), but is something lost too? Something vital? Raw? Authentic?
Something that Alfieri admires?

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