A View From The Bridge :: English Literature

A View From The Bridge Arthur Miller clearly uses different aspects of his play â€Å"A view from the bridge† to create dramatic tension. His central character Eddie is the person around who has a great deal of conflict revolving around him. He creates a lot of tensions and each scene of conflict becomes stronger than one before. He lives with his wife and her niece Catherine. Eddie is very protective of Catherine and wants her to get a good education. He also seems to be in love with Catherine but refuses to face this fact at any stage in the play even when Beatrice, his wife, points it out to him clearly. We also witness Eddie’s verbal conflict with all the characters at some point throughout the play. Other aspect is how the other characters feel concerned about him. There is a scene of unease as we see how Catherine and Beatrice are unsure about how he will react when he is told about Catherine’s job. As we understand Catherine is deeply influenced by Eddie and does everything he wants and Beatrice warns her not to act like a child in front of Eddie. The introduction of two foreign characters from Italy( Marco and Rodolpho) to this working class environment of New York creates a good deal of the conflict and tension in the play. Rodolpho is not married, good looking, lively and able to gain interest easily, in fact Catherine seems to have been immediately attracted to him. He dreams of being rich and returning to Italy with a monocycle. So Catherine falls in love with him and as soon as they begin to date Eddie gets very annoyed, as he is very possessive. He objects to the relationships between Catherine and Rodolpho because he is secretly but very jealous. Tension increases in Act One as Catherine boasts to Eddie that Rodolpho has been to Africa. Eddie and Marco describe their travels on fishing boats and Beatrice asks why they have to go out on boats to fish so Marco tells her that the only fish she will catch from the beach are sardines. Audience see that Catherine and Beatrice contemplate about the thought of sardines in the ocean. Catherine thinks the idea of sardines in the ocean is as strange as oranges on a tree. Eddie agrees with Catherine and makes weird announcement saying that he heard about painting oranges to make them look orange because they grew green on the tree. It sounds understandable for us that Rodolpho disagrees with Eddie's thoughts about the oranges and Beatrice feeling some kind of conflict coming up quickly diverts it by