_A_View_from_the_Bridge__Personal_Response

Personal Response #1 Stephen Yee Title: A View from the Bridge Author: Arthur Miller Type: Drama/Play Date Finished: 3/3/2010 This Play focuses on Eddie Carbone, an Italian-American, “forty- husky slightly overweight longshoreman”, who is living in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Eddie and his wife, Beatrice, decide to help two illegal immigrant cousins, Marco and Rodolfo, enter America from Sicily so they can work “get her in here will you...her cousins landed.” Rodolfo and Eddie’s niece, Catherine, quickly fall in love; however when Eddie’s incestuous feelings for Catherine turn to jealousy he commits an unforgiveable crime against his Sicilian community. One of the main themes in “A View from the Bridge” (AVFB) is the one of justice versus the law. To the Sicilians in the play, the Sicilian code supersedes the conventional Government law; this is because in Sicilian code Justice is everything, “justice is important here”, it is all about honour, loyalty and communities “sticking together” (Countrymen helping fellow countrymen); so when Eddie “dobs” in Marco and Rodolfo to the immigration bureau, he breaks this code, and thus loses his honour and standing in the community, “Marco has gone. The crowd turns to Eddie. He’s crazy! I give him the blankets off my bed. Six months I kept him like my own brothers! Lipari, the butcher, turns and starts up left with his arm around his wife.” This is near the end of the play, and shows the loss of respect he has gained from his community after dobbing in Marco and Rodolfo; they just ignore Eddie and his false pleas, only lamenting the sad situation that has befallen the two. When Eddie talked to Catherine and Beatrice about the incident of Vinnie Bolzano, he gives us insight to what happens to snitchers, “They grabbed him in the kitchen and pulled him down the stairs- three flights his head was bouncin’ like a coconut. And they spit on him in the street, his own father and his brothers.” This shows the brutality that occurs from breaking the Sicilian code, “his head bouncing like a coconut”; Vinnie Bolzano hasn’t done anything wrong in the boundaries of the government law (he has in fact enforced the government law) , but has completely smashed the Sicilian code . The last part where it says “they spit on him” shows his family doesn’t respect him and is basically disowning him; this story could be seen as foreshadowing the scene at the end of act III, where Marco spits on Eddie in front of the neighbourhood, which tells them that Eddie “Ratted” them out and is a snitch. After this Eddie claims that Marco stole his name, “I want my name... Marco’s got my name”, this sentence is a metaphor which implies when Marco spat on him in public, he took his honour, pride, and standing in the community which in essence is his “name”. In AVFB I enjoyed Alfieri the Sicilian lawyer. Alfieri represents a Greek chorus and establishes the play as a classical Greek tragedy, “he (Eddie Carbone) was a man of destiny”; he also represents the legal system, “I am a lawyer”, being both Sicilian and a lawyer means he has a view from both sides of the law (Sicilian & Government law) which shows him to the reader as a neutral person in the play. He is also an advocate for Eddie, as he is the one who establishes the idea of Eddie’s actions being driven by sexual motives, “His eyes were like tunnels; my first thought was that he had committed a crime, but soon I saw it was only a passion that had moved into his body.” This tells the reader of Eddie’s forbidden passion for Catherine, which later leads to the snitching of the two immigrants. These are a few reasons why I think Alfieri being the Greek chorus and narrator was a stroke of genius on Arthur Miller’s part, as Alfieri adds a depth to the play that is rarely seen in plays/novels in these modern times. One thing I didn’t enjoy as much was how short it was; and how it ended with the climax of Eddie dying, calling out “B.” Sure this could be argued that it was “short and sweet” or that it was a play so it was intended to be short; but I would have personally enjoyed a longer play to read, but that’s just my view. Apart from the short length it was a great play overall. “A view from the bridge” made me think about the difference of justice and the law. Law is the legal attempt at justice, but justice is different for each person; it all depends on their moral code and personal experiences. Like in AVFB Beatrice pleads with Eddie to forgive Rodolfo after he apologized to him, but all he could think of was blood (fighting), “Only blood is good' He kissed your hand!” For Beatrice Rodolfo kissing Eddie’s hand was justice, but for Eddie he needs his “name” back in order to achieve justice.