To an audience watching this particular scene when the play first was released in theatres, they would be not only shocked by Eddie’s actions, but also repulsed, because in the early nineteen hundreds, homosexuality was highly frowned upon and seen as a disgusting global epidemic that spread sexually transmitted infections (STIs). To people then, if someone was a homosexual then they were lower than them. Eddie’s actions would have very dramatically impaired their opinion of Eddie, making them think of him as a more disgraceful person.
Strangely, affect the kiss, the relationship between Catherine and Eddie has not been completely destroyed, however it is almost totally gone. By the end of the play, their relationship (along with Eddie) is dead. The action that breaks it completely is Eddie telephone call to the Immigration Office; a manoeuvre that he hoped would get Rodolfo out of his life for good, but ended up having drastic consequences that no one would have imagined happening.
At this point in the play and at this point in Eddie’s mind, he is willing to do anything to get rid of Rodolfo so that he can claim Catherine for himself. He is even willing to break all of the ethical rules of immigrated families and tell the authorities on ‘one of his own kind’. If I were in charge of directing this scene on stage, I would need to make sure that the actors playing the characters were able to cover a wide range of emotions because the final scenes features emotional roller-coasters for all characters. When Eddie calls the Immigration Office, I would cast the lighting so that it was dark, and try to have Eddie talking in a phone box in the middle of the stage, with half of his face covered in light and the other half shrouded by the dark. By doing this, it would show the audience how two-faced Eddie really is and how evil he has turned from a once good person.
When Catherine discovers what it is that Eddie has done to Rodolfo, and to Marco as well, she realises that there is no longer any kind of relationship between her and Eddie, and all that she feels for him is anger, hate, and what once was pity has now turned into disgust and loathing. She sees him as “a rat! He belongs in the sewer!… He bites people when they sleep! He comes when nobody’s lookin’ and poisons decent people! In the garbage he belongs!” She wants everyone to know what kind of person she is and what he can do with his manipulative, but not to mention confused and twisted, mind.
The first time that Catherine announced her and Rodolfo’s engagement, she wished more than anything for Eddie to put his issues behind him and bless them as a couple, and she also wished for him to go to their wedding without a grudge. But, because of the actions that Eddie has carried out, and because of the words he has spoken, Catherine only wishes now for him to stay as far away from her as possible.
At the end of the play, Catherine decided many things about Eddie Carbone (this is shown in all its entirety when Catherine doesn’t say a word when Eddie is stabbed, and it is only when he is clearly dying that she apologises for her actions). The first of these is that he is not worth anyone’s trouble, because if you give him any effort of your own, he’ll turn it against you and throw it back in your face.
Another conclusion that Catherine came to about Eddie is that he is a sick, mentally twisted and perverted human being, who can’t accept it if something is taken away from him unwillingly. But the most important decision that Catherine has made about Eddie is that he cannot let the ones he loves leave his so called ‘parentally guiding’ grasp. If he does lose a loved one, be it by death, moving location or to another man, he will try everything he can to try and get them back. This feeling of Catherine is what motivates the entire story and what causes Eddie to go to the extremes that he finally did go to.
In Conclusion…
Throughout the play, we see the character Eddie Carbone deteriorate as a husband, as an uncle and also as a human being. We realise what type of person he really is when he finds out that his niece is in love with another man and he gradually loses all sagacious control over his thoughts, words and actions. His wife may be the first person to notice how obvious his incestuous feelings have become, but it is not long before Marco, Rodolfo and unfortunately Catherine notice them too. The four major events that happen after this group realisation (the destruction of Catherine and Eddie’s relationship, the kisses from Eddie to Catherine and Rodolfo, the barging in of the immigration officers and the climactic death of Eddie) are all caused by Eddie’s irate actions and debauched feelings.
The relationship between Eddie and Catherine was always doomed to end in tragedy, because from the first instance we see them speak together, there is clearly some friction and frustration between the two. This friction is made a lot more prominent as the story develops, and by comparing the monstrous creature the Eddie has turned into at the end of the play to the once innocent and protective person that Eddie once was at the beginning, it is easy to see how much difference simple emotions such as jealousy, lust, passion, hate and anger can do to a man and to those around him who he loves.
