Dramatic Excitement in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge

Dramatic Excitement in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge

In this essay I am going to analyse the scene at the end of Act 1 of

'A View from the Bridge' and demonstrate how Arthur Miller, the best

playwright of his time makes it dramatically exciting. I am also going

to be writing about the three most important dramatic devices used by

Arthur Miller which are use of the narrator, (Alfieri) dialogue and

stage directions.

Arthur Miller starts off by showing us that Alfieri is a lawyer and is

going to have the job of a narrator in the play. Alfieri creates an

atmosphere of apprehension in the audience when he says that he has

had many tragedy cases which has made him very sad because in most of

them he could not do anything, he just had to sit there and watch

everything happen and go with the flow of tense situations. This gives

the audience a hint that this is going to be one of those cases and it

might even result in death.

Alfieri then starts telling us about the play by introducing us to

Eddie the main character saying 'This one's name was Eddie Carbone.'

Alfieri is shown as an objective and neutral person who does not take

anyone's side by being fair. This is shown when Eddie goes to Alfieri

for advice and complains to him about Rodolfo. As a lawyer Alfieri

tells Eddie the truth about the law which he knew it would not satisfy

Eddie. This then seems to be affecting Eddie's mood and he started to

simmer with anger and gets quite depressed. This is when Arthur Miller

creates a tension and makes it dramatic for the audience because the

audience would think that Eddie might do something stupid at any time

when he is angry but this time he controls it and the situation

becomes stable again. Alfieri gives us extra information about the

situation, characters and play. Alfieri is also the character who

makes us think about making a judgment. He is the key, which triggers