Settling for Half in Arthur Miller's Play a View From the Bridge

Settling for Half in Arthur Miller's Play a View From the Bridge

In this essay I will look at the idea of settling for half. In the

play, A View From The Bridge, the idea of settling for half is used

many times. This idea makes the play more tragic especially when a

certain character doesn't settle for half. To understand what settling

for half is we will have to establish what it means. Settling for half

is a sort of compromise. Most people would rather settle half than get

into trouble like the character Eddie Carbone should have done so

therefore people see settling for half as a good thing. But it isn't

always a good thing sometimes you may not get the result you would

want to get from settling for half. That is why in the play Eddie

Carbone didn't want to settle for half because otherwise he would lose

Catherine, whom he wanted to keep.

In this play there are many characters and the roles that the

characters play are similar to nearly every tragedy. One such

character is Alfieri who even though he plays two roles he is one of

the most significant characters. I say this because he plays one part

as a lawyer and another as a narrator/commentator. In his

commentator/narrator role Alfieri is Miller's mouthpiece so anything

that Miller wants to get across he can do by using Alfieri. Also he is

used to prepare us for any upcoming events. In his lawyer role he acts

as a good advice character to the tragic character, which in this play

is a person, called Eddie Carbone. Eddie Carbone is the tragic

character because he doesn't settle for half and as a result he ends

up getting killed at the end.

In the quotation above Alfieri says "…And now we are quite civilized,

quite American …". He says this because the Americans have a law,

which is written down on paper so it is a fixed law that can only be

changed by the government. At the beginning of the play Alfieri says