Discuss How the Characters Of Eddie, Beatrice and Catherine contribute

Discuss How the Characters Of Eddie, Beatrice and Catherine contribute

to the dramatic effects of A View From The Bridge

Character Studies

The various characteristics, including the flaws of the characters,

act as a great catalyst to the tragedy at hand throughout the play as

they portray and describe the characters’ emotion and thoughts towards

one another.

Catherine

Catherine is a very naïve woman who has not really experienced much of

the world, but is eager to. She has grown up in a warm nurturing

environment and so has grown into a very innocent and open character.

Catherine expresses her innocence by the way she will say what she the

thinks without a moment of thought towards the consequences,

‘(wondrously) How come he’s so dark and you’re so light, Rodolfo?’ By

the tone Catherine uses she blatantly shows that she has some sort of

attraction to Rodolpho. Judging from the text in where Beatrice says

‘Was there ever any fella he liked for you? They’ we can see that

Catherine’s previous relationships have been prevented from going very

far most probably by Eddie. Catherine is therefore very inexperienced

with relationships and shows this in her not very subtle approach to

Rodolfo and how clearly known she makes her feelings for him.

It is most probable that due to Catherine’s naivety and immaturity

that she does not realise Eddie’s passionate feelings towards her. As

Surprisingly Catherine genuinely is unaware as to Eddie’s passionate

feelings for her, and therefore does not realise that his feelings

towards her have over-stepped the bounds of fatherly love. As

previously she did not believe that their relationship was anymore

than that of a father-daughter one, we can tell this by her horri...

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...acters feature loyalty, in the play, such as Beatrice to

Eddie when she didn’t attend Catherine’s wedding in order to remain

loyal to Eddie, although here in a way she had to be disloyal to

Catherine and almost betray her, she did this merely in the interest

of keeping the peace. So we see that sometimes to maintain one loyalty

you have to lose another. Eddie also shows signs of loyalty as at the

start of the play he is loyal and hard-working towards his family,

just the same as Marco.

However we also see for Eddie that he betrays his own family merely

for his jealousy, and reports them for illegally immigrating to the

country, it is in this that Eddie deceives us, as due to the

Traditional Italian values he has, we came to expect him to be a loyal

character, however he sows us the worst betrayal, which leads to much

more drama and ultimately his death.