The Role of Alfieri in A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller In Miller’s ‘A View From The Bridge’, Alfieri holds a vital role. He opens and closes the play, distinguishes between the two acts and in general keeps the audience up to date with the play’s swift pace, providing us with an inside understanding of the events which take place. What is interesting about Alfieri’s role is that he acts not only as a chorus for the play, but that he also partakes in the proceedings as a character within the performance. There are clear biographical links between the playwright, Arthur Miller’s life and ‘A View From The Bridge.’ Miller himself was the son of immigrants living in New York in 1915. For two years during the 1940s Miller worked in the shipyards of Brooklyn with other Italians, experiencing first-hand the poor pay and exploitation of workers, as well as gaining an inside knowledge of the illegal immigration scheme running. He heard many of the longshoremen’s real-life stories, a number of which became inspiration for many of his plays - including ‘A View From The Bridge’. In Miller’s autobiography ‘Time Bends’, he narrates the dream a friend of his had about an attraction he felt for his cousin; yet refused to accept there was any truth in Miller’s interpretation that the man may have wanted an incestuous relationship with his cousin. During his time as a dockworker, Miller also heard the story of a longshoreman who had become a social pariah after betraying his family and the Sicilian code when he reported his own relatives to the Immigration Authorities because of a relationship he saw forming between one of the immigrants a... ... middle of paper ... ...s and situations which evolve throughout the performance. He helps to develop our awareness of what the effect of these events are. It is clear also that Miller has used Alfieri quite intentionally as a way through which to express some of his views, his main ambition being to prove to people that the death of a low-born character is equally as tragic as the death of a high-born one. He clearly accomplishes this in ‘A View From The Bridge’. Alfieri is not only used to enhance the audience’s understanding of the play but also to create a structure, distinguishing between the two acts. Effectively Alfieri is the view from the bridge; he sits and watches the events unfold, watching helplessly as Eddie walks closer and closer to the other side, knowing what the tragic outcome will be, yet remaining powerless to prevent it.
This whole play by Arthur Miller shows how our community will turn on each other to save ourselves no matter if it’s right or wrong and it’s true in our society today. It also shows how a good man regained his happiness and holiness by standing up for what’s right against the lies and sacrificed himself for the truth.
...ss. Arthur Miller, on the other hand, was disappointed by critic’s reactions. He claimed, “No critic seemed to sense what I was after, which was the conflict between a man’s raw deeds and his conception of himself”. Not only was he disappointed by critic’s reviews, he was disappointed by the “hostility of New York audiences”.
Exploring the Themes of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge East of Staten Island is Brooklyn, the second largest borough and the
who helps him on the way. The presence of law and justice is always in
In the play ‘A View from the Bridge’, an Italian-American family take in two illegal immigrants. The youngest of them, Rudolpho, falls in love with the niece of Beatrice, Catherine. Eddie Carbone, the main character, is driven by desire and lust, which eventually brings upon his own downfall. He calls the Immigration Bureau to arrest the two immigrants in an attempt to get his niece back, and so the scheme fails, and the play ends when Marco murders Eddie in a mere act of self-defence. Miller uses the character of Alfieri to increase dramatic tension throughout the play, doing so by introducing the idea of inevitability in the play. He establishes the character as a chorus, a component of early Greek theatre and tragedies. Alfieri basically expresses to the audience what the main character, Eddie Carbone, could not say, such as his fears or secrets. By knowing what will happen, and knowing how the play would end, whether a happy ending or sad, the principle of certainty and inevitability is revealed. Alfieri isn’t even capable of changing anything, altering the future, which also increases dramatic tension in the play. Throughout, Alfieri’s roles are obvious; he’s both the family lawyer and also the narrator of the play.
The nearly three-hour drama is told from the viewpoint of Salieri, who frequently comes to the front of the stage to explain himself in lengthy and passionate detail. It takes a dedicated performer to memorize the lines and a skilled actor to keep them interesting.
A View from the Bridge in told a series of flashback in the point of
Eddie in A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller "A View from the Bridge," is a play by Arthur Miller. The scene is down town New York along the fore shore and involves Eddie Carbone, an Italian Longshoreman, his wife Beatrice and her niece Catherine. When his wife's cousins, Marco and Rodolfo, seek refuge as illegal immigrants from Sicily, Eddie agrees to shelter them. Trouble begins, as his wife's niece Catherine, is attracted to Rodolfo. Eddie's baffled jealousy culminates in an unforgivable crime against his family and the Sicilian community.
the very end of the first act that Eddie has met his match, and is
“Miller tries both to offer a disclaimer about the imaginative aspects of his work, and to claim a higher level of veracity for the play’s authority.” (133)
The play appears to be similar to the story of Oedipus written by Sophocles. Both Oedipus and Willy don’t really realize who they are until the end of the story (Perry). When Oedipus realizes that he killed his father and married his mother, he blinded himself and sent himself into exile. When Willy realized he was a failure after Howard fired him, he decided to kill himself because he had no other way to provide for his family. Arthur Miller was largely influenced by three writers, Bertolt Brecht, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw. Brecht would try to tell stories from a Marxist perspective and he always wanted the audience to be able to engage with what was happening on stage. Brecht also ended most of his plays in trial scenes in which the themes of the play and their political inferences would be argued. Shaw expressed his many social concerns in his plays. Ibsen scandalized subjects such as suicide, feminism, and marital infidelity in “plays of vivid psychological realism” (“Miller’s Influences.”). Both suicide and marital infidelity are discussed in
commenting on events; he also plays a part in the play as a lawyer and
William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello boasts quite a little list of abnormalities in both occurrences and personal behavior.
A view from the Bridge was written by Arthur Miller in 1955 and set in
'A view from the bridge. I will comment on how he uses his role as