A View From The Bridge Essay-Arthur Miller

A View From The Bridge Essay-Arthur Miller

“A View From The Bridge” is a story with many themes and aspects such

as love, The American Dream, Justice, Law and Family Honour. The story

“A View From The Bridge” is about an Italian American community living

in Red Hook, New York. The Italian American community in Red Hook are

mainly all immigrants living in the country unlawfully.

I will briefly describe the play. Alfieri, an Italian-American lawyer

in his fifties, enters the stage and sits in his office. From his desk

he talks to the audience and he introduces the story of Eddie Carbone.

Alfieri compares himself to a lawyer in Caesar’s time.

Eddie walks down the street to his house As Eddie reaches his front

door two fellow Longshoremen, Louis and Mike greet him. Eddie’s niece,

Catherine reaches out of the window and waves to Eddie and Louis. When

Eddie enters the house he gently scolds Catherine for flirting with

the boys. Eddie thinks she should be more reserved and not ”walk so

wavy”. Beatrice, Eddie’s wife, is also home. When Beatrice and

Catherine set the table for dinner, they convince Eddie to let

Catherine take a job as a stenographer down by the docks but Eddie

didn’t want her to take the job because he thinks the men will take

advantage of her and he wants Catherine to finish college. Eddie

informs Beatrice that her cousins Marco and Rodolpho will be arriving

early from Italy. Beatrice and Eddie plan to hide Marco and Rodolpho

while they work in the country illegally to send money back home.

Marco and Rodolpho arrive at the house and a brief reunion. Marco

tells the Carbone family that he has three children and a wife back

home that he will be sending money to. Rodolpho is the younger blond...

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a man destroying himself, while those around him are as powerless as

the audience to prevent it. This is hinted at by the beginning of the

play.

This play shows a whole range of emotions and tackles many issues such

as The American Dream, Justice, Law and family Honour. In the end I

thought that because Eddie and Catherine cared deeply for each other

this led to Eddie being jealous of Rodolpho and over protective of

Catherine, which split the relationship between Catherine and Eddie

but also led towards the death of Eddie. All the characters in the

play then suffered a tragedy because nobody gained anything in the

play or achieved their dreams but mostly lost things instead of

gaining things. Family honour might have been satisfied, but only

through Eddie so that also proved to be negative because only Eddie

dealt with it and nobody else did.