Eddie Carbone as the Tragic Hero of the Play

Eddie Carbone as the Tragic Hero of the Play

“One who is neither villainous nor exceptionally virtuous, moving from

happiness to misery through some frailty or error in judgement.”

The above opening quotation is from Aristotle, which is his view of

what elements a tragic hero contains. This essay will investigate the

destiny of the main character Eddie Carbone also known as a tragic

hero, as illustrated by Arthur Miller in ‘A view from a Bridge’

against Aristotle’s view of a tragic hero. The play takes place in

Brooklyn in a working-class Italian-American neighbourhood which is

hooked by a social code.

Eddie Carbone a husband and supposedly father who raised an orphan

niece as a daughter due to a death bed promise. A longshoreman working

on the docks, working hard in life that was hard; on the other hand a

good man not intentionally trying to be mean, but the downfall to his

life faces him when his niece falls in love with one of the

immigrants, a young handsome man, which is hard for Eddie to cope as

his inner thought of his love for the niece is too much that he does

not admit but is persistently protective as he is obsessed with her

and is scared of anyone stealing her, in other words it shows his

jealousy.

Eddie seems to have an obsessive love for his niece Catherine which he

covers up and puts the situation across that he is responsible for

what she does; the truth is he doesn’t want her to be in the company

of other men or lose her to them:

“Katie, you are walkin’ wavy! I don’t like the looks they’re givin’

you in the candy store. And with them new high heels on the sidewalk –

clack, clack, clack…I promised your mother on her deathbed. I’m

responsible for you. You’re a baby, you don’t und...

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...sodes occur of Eddie trying to cope with his inner

violent reaction until he commits what his neighborhood consider the

most shameful of crimes. This is a feature of a tragic hero as they

always die in some way at the end. In this play Eddie dies by Marco

coming back for revenge but Eddie approaches Marco with a knife, since

Marco is strong, he turns Eddies arm and kills him with his own knife.

The importance of the knife still in Eddies possession shows that he

brought his own downfall, and the traces of his fingerprints are on

it, shows he committed it himself. The image created is he brought his

own death on himself, through his own error in judgment. Therefore

Eddie is a tragic hero as he is not intentionally evil, his weakness

of letting Catherine go causes him to suffer and move from happiness

to misery eventually a wrong decision to his own death.