Eddie plays Essay

The third of these parts is an actual character in the play. Alfieri plays a lawyer that Eddie goes to for advice. Alfieri works in a poor community and only deals with small neighbourhood affairs. ‘Morally and Legally you have no right, you cannot stop it’ is a piece of advice Eddie receives from Alfieri, he ignores the advice and chooses to deal with it his own way by breaking the neighbourhood code of honour. Alfieri as a character feels he can no longer change Eddie’s mind and feels rather powerless at this time. The last part Eddie plays is the epilogue. This is the small speech Alfieri says at the end of the play which is rather like a eulogy. A eulogy is a speech made at a funeral. It usually outlines the good points about the deceased person. When the play is portrayed on stage, Alfieri has a very important part to play as the epilogue. The speech has to look effective, the lights dim down and Alfieri talks to the audience. This speech is aimed at the audience and ends the play on a serious note.. The epilogue takes an effect on the on the audience as there are women ‘keening’ on the stage in other words crying on there knees. This has strong effect on the audience while Alfieri’s reading the epilogue. This is seen as reflective time following the sudden violent action of Eddie’s death. Alfieri try’s to say good things about Eddie. He describes him ‘ I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients’ the epilogues message is saying something nice about Eddie. Alfieri is saying Eddie’s case is very different to the rest of his cases he has dealt with . Eddie added excitement to Alfieri’s normally dull lifestyle and Alfieri will miss that. By the saying ‘settle for half’ Alfieri means the audience would probably settle for compromise. In ‘ A View from the Bridge’ Eddie is see as the hero, unfortunately every tragic hero has a weakness and for Eddie his tragic Weakness is his desire for Catherine his Niece. Eddie finally realises he can’t have her When Beatrice tells him in the final scene. She begins telling Eddie she loves him, when he doesn’t respond she tells him ‘you want somethin’ else Eddie and you can never have her! ‘ The actress wouldn’t be angry while delivering the phrase but she wouldn’t be happy either. To face up to their partner loving someone else is very hard, especially telling them you know and finding out it’s your niece. Catherine and Eddie react in horror to what they have just heard and Eddie continues to deny it. Eddie is so full of horror at hearing this speech because he knows his secret is out, it’s also the shock of someone saying you fancy your niece. This gets translated into anger against Marco because Eddie has been getting more and more annoyed and when Beatrice tells him he sees Marco’s challenge outside as a means of physically venting his anger, pain and frustration. The revelation to himself of his desires for Catherine would be tearing his mind apart so the audience would see a an virtually insane. As in a Greek tragedy Marco is seen as Eddie’s inevitable doom, Eddie cannot escape death. There have been many failed attempts to prevent the final tragedy, these have been made by Alfieri, Catherine, Beatrice and even Rodolpho. Rodolpho tries to stop Eddie by saying ‘No he has children, you will destroy a family’ But this still doesn’t stop Eddie fighting with Marco. As soon as Eddie finds out about Rodolpho and Catherine he is on the path to destruction. This is shown in the final meeting Eddie has with Alfieri, also when he returns home drunk to find Rodolpho and Catherine have probably had sex. In the play Eddie has a high demand for respect this can often affect other characters in the play as Eddie reels them in and gets them involved. At the start of the final scene Eddie tells Beatrice that if she attends the wedding she can’t come back to their house. When Eddie tells Beatrice she can’t return to his house the audience would be quite surprised. Beatrice having to miss out on her niece’s wedding just because Eddie doesn’t want to lose his pride. The audience would be telling Beatrice just to go to the wedding but she doesn’t want to lose Eddie. Eddie feels that Catherine owes him respect because he took her in after her mother and father died and he also paid for her stenograph lessons so she could get a well paid job. Catherine then enters from the bedroom and seems as if she didn’t hear Beatrice and Eddie’s conversation. She ask’s Beatrice if she’s ready as the wedding starts at three and the ‘priest won’t wait’. When Eddie asks Beatrice whose side she’s on, Catherine reacts differently to her whole attitude throughout the play. She suddenly shouts ‘Who the hell do you think you are? ‘ this makes an impression on Beatrice and Eddie. Moreover, the audience have not heard her speak like this before. Beatrice tells Catherine to ‘sssh’ but Catherine doesn’t listen and continues to insult Eddie. This is quite shocking to the audience because at any moment Eddie could hurt Catherine as the audience know what he’s capable of and can see the anger in his eyes. As Catherine continues Beatrice also tells Catherine to shut up but she doesn’t listen. Beatrice ignores Catherine when she tells her to come this is when she calls Eddie a rat. ‘He bites people when they sleep! He comes when nobody’s lookin’ and poisons decent people. In the garbage he belongs’. Catherine refers to Eddie as a sewage rat because he is under the ground and lower than anyone else. Catherine feels Eddie belongs in the garbage. Also Miller is using a pun. The American colloquialism ‘to rat’ on somebody is the same as the English ‘grass’ somebody up which is wha ople had for Eddie. By telling what Eddie had done, Marco took away the respect Eddie had, therefore he stole his name-which is referred to as a mark of respect. When Eddie addresses the people about Marco stealing his respect he talks about all he has done for Marco and Rodolpho. He explains how he took them in and how he’d never even seen them before. He makes vague references to the bible and feels he offered them sanctuary from the world outside and the law. ‘ Little bits of laughter even escape him as his eyes are murderous’. This is a sentence from the stage directions when Eddie is saying his speech to the neighbourhood. This is the first part which shows Eddie is becoming virtually insane with anger. His anger is continually boiling up over the whole play and the argument with Marco is a time when he can let it all out and it adds to the excitement of the argument. The way Eddie speaks makes him seem to be going virtually insane. He makes the argument out as if it’s all Marco’s fault and even seems to forget about Rodolpho a and Catherine. In his speech Eddie starts it off with a series of rhetorical questions and it doesn’t matter because Eddie doesn’t give Marco time to answer. Miller makes Eddie say the speech because Eddie’s anger has had a dramatic effect on the audience. The speech is very similar to other tragedies. Eddie’s address is like an aria in an opera, full of passion which here is making Eddie almost incoherent. Eddie gives Marco an option, if he gives him his name back they can go peacefully to the wedding. Of course Marco declines. When Eddie makes the offer to Marco, He makes it in the street in front of everyone. He feels Marco has done wrong and he continues to deny telling the immigration bureau. Eddie just wants Marco to tell the neighbourhood he was lying then everything will be ok. However, Eddie’s tone of contempt would grate in the audience. The public confrontation that Eddie and Marco have is typical of western cowboy films. This relates to Millers opinion that the Brooklyn waterfront was like the ‘wild west’. The participants usually walk 10 paces then face each other and fight like a duel. Cowboy films were very popular in the 1950’s with actors like Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck and John Wayne.. The idea of a western confrontation comes from the phrase ‘A man’s gotta’ do what a mans gotta’ do’. Arthur Miller once said the waterfront in the 1950’s that it was ‘the wild west, a desert beyond the law’. The confrontation Eddie and Marco have is based on the idea of a man has to stand up for what he believes in and Eddie is doing that by asking for his name back but Marco was also doing that because he believed he should have told the neighbourhood what Eddie had done. The duel between Eddie and Marco is very much like that in a typical Wild West film. Like gunfighters approaching each other down the high street, Eddie and Marco are approaching each other across the stage. Each as in a typical western duel challenges the other. Eddie says ‘ Marco, tell them what a liar you are! Both actors have their arms outspread similar to the gun fighter’s hands hovering above their hoisted guns. Like in a cowboy duel Eddie makes the first move ‘lunging’ for Marco. As in a western the spectators gasp in surprise however Marco’s superior strength strikes Eddie to the ground. Marco calls Eddie ‘Animal! ‘ showing that Eddie can no longer consider himself human. This is similar to Catherine earlier calling him a rat. Marco also shouts ‘ Get on your knees to me’ this is the dramatic way Marco demands respect. Miller emphasises Marco’s rage by use of exclamation marks. However Eddie breaks the rules of the duel by producing a knife causing Marco to step back. When the audience see Eddie go down they would probably be shocked because although the story is like a Greek tragedy the audience might not have known that. When Eddie goes down the audience would be happy Eddie can cause no more damage but as the hero the audience will have become rather attached to him. When Eddie produces the knife they would be surprised but anxious at the same time. They know that either Eddie or Marco is going to die, the way the actors portray the fight would affect the way the audience felt. The knife ‘ups’ the stakes and makes a violent death even more of a possibility. When Eddie and Marco begin to fight, Louis try’s to intervene and stop them ‘ for Christ’s sake! ‘ When Louis says this Eddie raises the knife and appears as if he’s going to strike as Louis has seen the way Eddie is acting he believes he will do it and steps back, leaving Eddie and Marco to face each other. Miller makes Louis intervene as a sort of last resort to stop the fight. His wife, his niece and his wife’s cousins have all attempted to stop the fight happening and each of them have failed. Miller feels that a friend can usually stop you doing something that isn’t right. Unfortunately Eddie made a big mistake using a knife because this fight is becoming his last. Marco intentionally turns the blade inwards and forces Eddie to stab himself. This ties in with the idea of a Greek tragedy. The hero facing his inevitable doom. From the beginning of the play Marco was seen as Eddie’s inevitable doom. ‘ A View from the Bridge’ is similar to other tragedies where the hero meets his inevitable doom. ‘Macbeth’ written by William Shakespeare arised from the idea of a Greek tragedy. The main character mentioned in the title, meets his inevitable doom at the end of the play. Another play written by Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet also arises from a Greek tragedy when two of the main characters meet their doom. I was quite shocked when I heard the end of the play. Even though I knew it was a Greek tragedy I didn’t expect Eddie to die. From the way Miller describes Marco’s appearance I could tell he would probably cause some trouble. When Marco picked the chair up over Eddie you could tell Marco wasn’t afraid of confrontation if necessary. I think that the message Miller was trying to get across is that fighting isn’t the answer and that whatever happens was meant to happen, it’s your fate. At the end when Alfieri says the epilogue I think Miller means we can come to a compromise and if they can’t then walk away, or else we to will have to face the same consequences as Eddie Carbone.