Essay Of A View From The Bridge By Eddie Carbone

Certain characteristics can develop overtime depending on a person’s life. In many cases, these traits that people cling onto can ultimately decide who they are, based on the decisions they may make. However, the specific combination of traits comes together to form an ego that expresses a large part of whom a person really is. With the characteristics and ego all wrapped up in a ball, tragic flaw can be thrown into the mixture if the circumstances call for it. In the novel A View from the Bridge, by Arthur Miller, a man named Eddie Carbone possesses an obsessive trait due to his almost infatuation with his niece Catherine. Throughout the play, the struggle to control his niece despite her “love” for Beatrice’s cousin, Rodolpho, brings out

In A View from the Bridge, Eddie expresses anger towards his wife’s cousins Marco and Rodolpho because Rodolpho is in love with Eddie’s niece Catherine just so he can become a US citizen. Throughout the story, Eddie’s anger builds up, and finally, he calls the Immigration services on the two men. This act of Eddie’s put the three men in bad terms. At Catherine and Rodolpho’s wedding, Marco shows up despite Eddie not wanting him there which sparks an altercation between the two then “Eddie lunges with the knife. Marco grabs his arm, turning the blade inward and pressing it home as the women and Louis and Mike rush in and separate them, and Eddie, the knife still in his hand, falls to his knees before Marco”. (Miller 85) Due to Eddie’s violent nature in the end it ultimately kills him because he cannot fight the urge to cause harm to the man who is insulting him. Likewise, Oedipus in Oedipus Rex, expresses his volatility throughout the play. The choices he makes aren’t necessarily made off of great intentions because as he is at the crossroads a chariot came at him and forced him off the road, which makes him instantly enraged, which is a very common characteristic of Oedipus’s. After Oedipus makes eye contact with the old man, Oedipus swings with “[his] club in [his] right hand and knocked him out of his cart, and [the old man] rolled on the ground. [He] killed him. [He] killed all of

Eddie shows his ego throughout the book because he feels the need to show that he is the one helping the two men, giving them a place to sleep and that they owe him. However, they are just disrespecting him by marrying his niece, whom he loves, and by insulting him in front of his neighbors. Therefore, Eddie decides to rat them out. After he has already done this, he states that he “wants [his] respect. Didn’t [they] ever hear of that?” (Fitts 80) Even though it may be a small line, that word exemplifies his ego because he feels above them and feels the need to show that to everyone around him. Oedipus follows suit with this mantra of respect and power throughout Oedipus Rex. During the play, Oedipus becomes enraged when he feels that his best friend Creon may be trying to plot against him in order to obtain the power that he holds. Oedipus from the start feels that he is a gift from the gods and uses his status to express his power. In the play Oedipus states “Wealth, Power, craft of statesmanship! Kingly position, everywhere admired…if Creon, whom [Oedipus] trusted, Creon [his] friend, for this great office which the city once put in [his] hands unsought- if for this power Creon desires in secret in destroy [Oedipus]” (Fitts 20). Even though Oedipus holds the title of king he is still skeptical of even his closet friends trying to