A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller Essay Example for Free

A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller Essay In Arthur Millers play, A View From The Bridge the character of Alfieri is a very important piece of the play. He leads many different roles throughout the play, and is a very useful tool for letting the audience know what they need to do. In this essay, I will be examining the many different roles of Alfieri during the play, and examining what the effects are of these roles on the play, the other characters and the audience. I will also be looking briefly at the background of where the play is set, and also be looking briefly at the author, Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller was born in 1915, in Manhattan, New York. In his early years his family were pretty well off, but when the economic depression hit America in 1929, him and his family lost a lot of money and security. They had to move to a much poorer area of New York called Brooklyn. When Arthur Miller eventually left school at 17, he didnt have enough money or the right qualifications to enter University, and so he tried out a variety of jobs. His many jobs included a waiter, a lorry driver, a crooner on a local radio station and a shipping clerk. He saved all his money, and in 1934 was accepted into Michigan University. He won three awards for playwriting, but was still unemployed when he graduated four years later. During the Second World War, Miller was unable to complete military service due to an old injury he gained, and so instead did manual work at shipyards and some freelance radio scriptwriting. He enjoyed writing plays for live theatre, and his first play, The Man Who Had All The Luck, was first performed in 1949 at Broadway. It later went onto win the Theatre Guild National Prize. His next play, All My Sons, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. His two most successful plays, Death Of A Salesman and The Crucible soon followed. He later went onto write the play I am studying: A View From The Bridge. The play is set in Red Hook a slum next to Brooklyn Bridge, New York. The neighbourhood is very rough, and everybody their looks after themselves primarily and their families. Law and Order are not welcome there, and Lawyers and Priests are generally untrusted people. The bay next to Brooklyn Bridge was a favourite place for immigrants to illegally enter the U.  S. A. Between 1820 and 1920, migration to the U. S. A was one of the biggest transportation of people in human history. In those 100 years, more than four million Italians went over to live there, hoping to leave behind the poverty and bad times from where they had previously lived, which in most cases was the South of Italy and Sicily. They migrated because they believed America could offer them more opportunities (including work) than their native land ever could. However, life often wasnt how they thought it would be. The immigrants were often so desperate for work that employers exploited them, by paying them the bare minimum they could. The jobs themselves were all hard manual labour, which would help America to increase its wealth and power. The immigrants found themselves living in the worst and cheapest housing around, but still thought they were better off in America than they would have been back in Italy or Sicily. Indeed, many Americans distrusted Italians, and believed them to be dangerous and violent. It is this idea of immigrants illegally entering the U. S. A that provides the plot for A View From The Bridge. The play is based around Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman, his wife Beatrice, and Eddies niece, Catherine. Eddie is very overly protective of Catherine, and doesnt really want to let her grow up. Beatrices cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, have just entered the U. S. A illegally from Sicily. Eddie and Beatrice agree to hide the cousins in their house. Rodolpho and Catherine become very good friends. Eddie becomes very suspicious of Rodolpho he accuses him of being gay and only wanting to marry Catherine so he can be a legal citizen of the U.S. A. Eddie tries to warn Catherine of his beliefs about Rodolpho, but she refuses to believe a word of it. Beatrice meanwhile, wants Catherine to grow up and so encourages her to marry Rodolpho. Eddie becomes more and more jealous and angry about the amount of time Catherine and Rodolpho spend together. He visits the local lawyer, Alfieri, and asks him if there is any way he can get rid of Rodolpho legally. Alfieri informs him that there is nothing he can do, and that he should just let Catherine go. The situation starts to grow worse and worse. One night, Eddie comes home drunk. He desperately tries once more to split up Catherine and Rodolpho, but he once again fails. After kissing Catherine and then Rodolpho, Eddie goes to visit Alfieri again. Alfieri once again advises Eddie to just let go of Catherine, but Eddie cant do it. Instead, he calls the Immigration Bureau and reports Marco and Rodolphos illegal entry to the U. S. A. The Immigration Bureau come and arrest Marco and Rodolpho, and after a big fight in the street, Marco spits in Eddies face (a huge insult). Alfieri pays bail for the two cousins and then arranges the wedding of Catherine and Rodolpho for the following day. Eddie is furious that Marco spat in his face, and so is desperate for revenge. Marco returns to the house angry for his own revenge, when Eddie turns a knife on Marco. Marco manages to turn the knife around and stab Eddie- who then dies of his injuries. However, it is the character of Alfieri that I will now be focusing on. Alfieri is the first character we meet in the play, which therefore means that everything he says must capture the attention of the audience immediately. In this first opening speech of his, he acts like a special kind of narrator; a character who is filling us in on a brief background of the setting, and setting the scene for the rest of the play. He appears at first walking along the road outside Eddies house, which is where the majority of the play is set. He informs the audience about the neighbourhood where the play is set, and tells them that this particular neighbourhood has no place for law and order: A lawyer means the law, and in Sicily, from where their fathers came, the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks were beaten.