The Character Alfieri in Arthur Miller's Play, A View From the Bridge

Arthur Miller, in his play A View from the Bridge, gives a different perspective of the story by focusing on the character Alfieri who makes the audience understand the real side of the play.

Alfieri is a well educated lawyer who follows and respects the American law, but is still loyal to Italian ethnicity. In A View from the Bridge Alfieri is equivalent to the chorus in a Greek tragedy, meaning he introduces the play and narrates the story in flashback. He explains the events on the stage to the audience without actually participating. He opens the play with a very revealing account of how life used to be and how life is presently in America in the Italian community. He goes into graphic detail about the past murders: “… and Frankie Yale himself was cut precisely in half by a machine gun on the corner of Union Street, two blocks away” (Act I pg 4). This creates a vivid mental picture and therefore creates the ideal environment for tragedy.

In order to strengthen this point Alfieri states that lawyers in ancient times as well present times, were unable to prevent “complaint” running a “bloody course”, this causes us to issue the power and influence of law. In other words, justice is very essential but by law justice is not always delivered. Alfieri strongly believes that it is best to “settle for half”; this means that it is better to rely on written law and accept it even if you are half satisfied. It is better to follow the law rather taking it in your own hands. In the play we can see that Eddie Carbone betrays Marco and Rodolpho by calling the Immigration Bureau, this is ironic as Eddie is obeying the American law but not the Italian ‘law of honor’. Now there is no law to punish Eddie and as a consequence Marco takes th...

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...ieri as a character and a narrator was successful in giving a twist of suspense in this play. The message conveyed through Alfieri is that we should judge with our heads, unlike Eddie whose actions are performed sentimentally. If we use our mind then the troubles that are attached to us will repel and if we give feelings to our action then more problems will be attracted to your life. Our behavior and actions cannot always depend on our feelings, although sometimes we need to take our sentiments into consideration and see how it will affect other people and the environment. If we use our mind, we can achieve the goal, but we need to take feelings along it. In every way we should always concretize our dreams and needs with feelings, but not very emotionally. John Harricharan truly said “Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.”