A View From The Bridge

A view from the bridge was written by Arthur Miller in 1955.It is set in Brooklyn in the city of New York in a place called Red Hook. Here there is a great emphasis on Italian migrant families. At that time people where coming from Sicily and they where running away from a life of poverty. Mainly it was the men who moved to America to find a well paid job and then send the money they made to their families back in Sicily.

Miller learnt about Italian migrants and there struggles when he worked in the shipyards. He learnt about the terrible poverty that drove them to leave their families in Italy. Sicily was where most of the migrants came from. It was one of the most desperately deprived areas. This is shown when Rodolpho states ‘‘sometimes they build houses sometimes they fix a bridge if there’s work we do anything.’’ Miler wrote about Italian migrant families because the level of unemployment in Sicily which was exceedingly high. As all illegal immigrants had no rights the communities of migrant families had developed a lot of self respect, honour and reputation, to govern there communities. These themes therefore, play a big part in a view from the bridge.

The play is structured within 2 acts leaving the play free of intervals. This makes the play short and effective. Miller created a short and simple story line to send out a message to his audience. The message was that hatred can have a domino effect; it could lead to death and destruction of families therefore this play could be classified as a classic tragedy.

Miller builds tension throughout the play. We see right from the onset of the play, that Miller uses Alfieri as the chorus in the play. As only Greek tragedies consisted of these. It suggests that ‘a view from...

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...e’s niece like he would if she was his daughter. He tells her what to wear and what she can’t for example her skirt he doesn’t want it to be to short because he doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. Eddie also comments on the way she walks saying she walks ‘wavy’ Miller emphasis the word ‘wavy’ which is used by Eddie to express his sexual feelings. It suggests that Catherine is attention seeking and that she has little respect for herself. This shows that Eddie is trying to stop her from looking bad and that Eddie would go to any length to protect her.

Miller over all makes this act the most effective by creating a lot of tension between characters miller builds tension throughout the act by sending messages/warnings which are through the characters action and behaviour the desired effect on the audience is to engage them which the stage direction does.