My initial reaction to the play was absolutely hideous, and my malcontent was vibrant. I felt that reading A View From The Bridge was a tedious waste of time and that the play itself was a trivial piece of literature. I found the play to be neither intriguing nor interesting in the tiniest fashion.
The only aspect that I found mildly intriguing was the character of the protagonist, Eddie Carbone, as it miraculously appealed to my passion for psychology.
Unfortunately, this enigma of Eddie’s constitution only guided me through the first act, where after, I was completely annoyed and jaded. The two-act horror is centered on the self-delusion of Eddie Carbone, as he is thrust into a continuously evolving world in which he will not conform. As his environment is morphing with the times, Eddie feels compiled to halt it, as his pathetic temperament will not wallow him to cope with the change, or behave in an orderly fashion. Eddie begins to veil himself from his love for his eighteen-year-old niece, Catherine, near the commencement of the play, whence he begins to criticize her and her perfectly normal actions. “Now don’t aggravate me, Katie, you are walkin’ wavy! I don’t like the looks they’re givin’ you in the candy store. And with them new high heels on the sidewalk — clack, clack, clack. The heads are turnin’ like windmills.”Page 7
In this quote we see how Eddie falsely attributes his harshness towards Catherine as protection, rather than selfishness and his obsession to have her solely to himself. Another element in Eddie’s constitution is his personal honor, which he tosses aside whence he takes it upon himself to call the Immigration Bureau to reveal his nemesis and competitor for Catherine’s love, Rodolpho, to the police. This is apparent when Alfieri tells Eddie the consequences to him calling the Immigration Bureau: “You won’t have a friend in the world, Eddie! Even those who understand will turn against you, even the ones who feel the same will despise you! Put it out of your mind.”Page 66
These aspects are portrayed thoroughly expansively in this horrible excuse for a play, and have a strong effect on the reader. A View From The Bridge is an unusually single-minded play and an apparent sense of doom shrouds it. The main ideas are compiled into one story line, and the play is absent of much needed sub-plots.
In my opinion, these vapid aspects were completely pathetic, yet in an uncanny manner, extremely human. In one way or another, everyone experiences a hint of self-delusion or a pinch of personal honor in their everyday lives. I myself am continually faced with the standing of my own personal honor, especially when plunged into debates. When faced with such a situation, my own personal honor becomes a grand old deal, as it disables me form accepting error or fault. Due to the sense of humanity and realism in Arthur Miller’s catastrophic blunder of a play, the un-enthused un-amused reader is able to experience a pang of refreshment. This brief moment of diversion is endured whence they realize that on some proverbial, undefined level, they are able to connect with the characters and their emotions and therefore understand the concepts and ideas of the play.
There were many characters in the play that effectively enabled me to comprehend the subjects of Arthur Miller’s play. For instance the character of Marco helped me grasp a stronger understanding about personal honor and standing by your beliefs, as his character exemplified this trait. I also enjoyed the character of Alfieri, as I found that from his distant pint of view, he empowered me to understand all the various ideas portrayed in the play from an unbiased point of view. Though the character of Alfieri aided me the most, I found the most effective character in the play to be the devil’s spawn himself, Eddie Carbone, as the play is portrayed mainly through his eyes.
Eddie”s shallow, miserable nature is a powerful, hard-hitting aspect noted extensively in the play. As per previously mentioned, I despised Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge. The two-act, eighty-six-paged horrendous nightmare will forever be embedded in my mind as a complete was of time and effort. I despise this pathetic excuse for English literature and wish for it to blaze in Hades.
