A View from the Bridge York Notes

Eddie tells Catherine and Beatrice at the outset that he believes loyalty is very important and anybody who breaks the unwritten code deserves punishment. When he does betray the cousins he makes it quite clear that he feels he, himself, has been betrayed. Beatrice voices what Eddie does not want to hear, his unhealthy relationship with Catherine. It is this relationship, his jealousy of Rodolfo and his own tortured mind which, in the end, force him to abandon his loyalty to the cousins, himself and to his family.

In his first speech Alfieri sets the tone for the whole play when he says, ‘Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. Justice is very important here.’ He makes the point that justice is much more important than the law. So at the beginning Eddie is saying just that to Beatrice and Catherine. He tells them that even though Rodolfo and Marco are breaking the law they must be protected. He implies that even though they are behaving illegally it would be a betrayal not to protect them. Eddie is making it clear that they must all be on the side of justice.

However, when Rodolfo arrives, Miller shows us Eddie’s mood changing quite dramatically and almost immediately. Miller has already made us aware of Eddie’s controlling nature when his comfortable relationship with Catherine is threatened even slightly, but now that threat has moved up dramatically when Eddie can see that Catherine is attracted to the Italian. When she tells him that Rodolfo loves her he pleads desperately, ‘Don’t say that, for God’s sake!’ And then he tries to cover his grief by saying, ‘This is the oldest racket in the country –’ Miller is gradually increasing the tension and whenever Eddie is present on stage we feel that the rumblings under the surface could erupt at any time. From this moment to the end of the play Eddie’s mood grows bleaker every time we meet him.

When Marco threatens Eddie and then Eddie sees Catherine and Rodolfo coming out of the bedroom, we know that Eddie is fast losing control. Even so, it is quite a shock to hear him telephoning the Immigration Authorities about Rodolfo and Marco, because of what he said earlier about betrayal. We now see that Eddie has decided that his own interests are more important than those of anyone else.

Miller uses two moments of high drama which help to heighten Eddie’s emotional level even more. When Marco raises the chair above Eddie’s head he is warning him and also showing who is the stronger. And, as Miller tells us, ‘Eddie’s grin vanishes as he absorbs his look’. The second is, of course, when he observes first Catherine and then Rodolfo emerging from the bedroom. Both are terrible moments for Eddie but the second destroys him because he now knows he has lost Catherine for ever. Shocked though we are when he calls the Immigration Authorities, Miller has prepared us for this and we know there is a kind of logic to what Eddie has done.

We might feel some disgust at Eddie for the way he has behaved, but, in the end it is difficult to blame him. He has been driven by an obsession that he finds impossible to control. He dare not admit his feelings for Catherine so he has to find other ways of discrediting Rodolfo. It seems obvious in the final moments that he cannot see any way of living and accepting his fate. He has lost Catherine. Beatrice may still love him but part of her despises him, and the whole neighbourhood, as Alfieri says, condemns his actions. You could argue, therefore, that Eddie engineers his own death at the hands of Marco in order to regain some dignity before finally allowing himself to be destroyed and, therefore, ending the terrible torture that he has created for himself.