Review of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge

Review of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge

This week I chose to read the play "A View from the Bridge" written by

Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was born on October 17th, 1915, in New

York City. His parents were both immigrants into the United States.

The family lived in prosperity due to the success of his father's

clothing manufacturing business, but this collapsed, along with the

American economy as a whole, following the Wall Street crash. As a

result Miller had to work as a warehouseman in order to save his fees

before he was able to go to Michigan University in 1934 to study

Economics and History.

While at university Miller also followed a course in playwriting and

this now became his primary ambition. After graduating in 1938, he

earned his living from journalism and from writing radio scripts.

During world war two he also worked as a ship fitter for two years in

the Brooklyn Navy Shipyard, where a 'near a majority of the workers

were Italian' and where Miller 'made connections with their

family-centred concerns…[which were] full of Sicilian dramas' (time

bends). His first produced stage play, "The Man Who Had All the Luck"

was a failure when it was staged on Broadway in 1944, however, in

1947, "All My Sons" was a considerable success.

Alfieri, an Italian-American lawyer in his fifties, enters the stage

and sits in his office. Talking from his desk to the audience, he

introduces the story of Eddie Carbone. Alfieri compares himself to a

lawyer in Caesar's time, powerless to watch as the events of history

run their" bloody course".

Eddie Carbone walks down the street to his house. As Eddie enters the

home two ...

... middle of paper ...

...llegal immigrants hiding upstairs from the

Carbone's in the Lipari house.

I think the target audience for this play is from the age of 13 and

upwards. This is because the innermost themes and issues of the play

are not very easy to work out.

In conclusion, I found this book quite interesting because it used a

lot of emotion and had parts where it would leave questions in the

readers mind for the reader to work out such as the themes as it does

not state clearly that there will be violence or betrayal.

Out of ten I would rate this book a six out of ten as I didn't enjoy

reading it very much because I prefer adventure books such as The Lord

of the Rings and the Dark Materials Trilogy. I would recommend this

book to people who enjoy reading about the different types of

lifestyles and laws of different societies.