A View from the Bridge

A View from the Bridge fallows the structure and tropes of ancient Greek tragedy in several key respects. First, as in Greek tragedy, there is a prologue that sets up the context for the events of the drama delivered by a figure who observes and comments on the events as they unfold but is not involved in them. While in ancient Greek tragedy, that role would be filled by the chorus, in A View from the Bridge, it is filled by just one character, the lawyer Alfieri. Furthermore, the protagonist, Eddie, conforms to the figure of the tragic hero. Like Oedipus or Medea, Eddie is an essentially good or noble character who is destroyed by a fatal flaw. Oedipus’s fatal flaw is his unswerving commitment to the truth and Medea’s is her desire to preserve her dignity; Eddie’s fatal flaw is his love for Catherine. Following the structure of a Greek tragedy, Eddie’s fatal flaw destroys him.

The specific misdeeds Eddie commits that lead to his downfall also echo key tropes from famous Greek tragedies. His passion for his wife’s niece Catherine is semi-incestuous, invoking Oedipus’s incestuous relationship with his mother in the Oedipus cycle. Hospitality was also a central moral obligation in ancient Greek society, and the betrayal of the duties of hospitality is one of the crimes for which the tragic characters are punished in the ancient Greek tragedies of writers like Aeschylus. When Eddie calls immigration on Marco and Rodolpho, he violates his duty to his family and his immigrant community to protect and support one another. The phone booth serves as a symbol of both his crime and his fate. Left I view throughout the play in many productions, the booth indicates to the audience that Eddie’s fateful decision to report Marco and Rodolpho to the immigration authorities is pre-ordained. Further, as with Greek tragic heroes like Oedipus or Medea, his downfall is the result of the conflict between the character’s passion and the social laws to which he is subject.

While many elements of character and plot follow the conventions of Greek tragedy, however, many other elements of the play diverge from them. Despite Alfieri’s references to the ancient world at the opening of Act I, its setting could not be further removed from ancient Greece. Busy, industrial, mid-century New York City is the antithesis of ancient Athens or its rural surrounds. Likewise, while classical tragedy focuses on people at the top of the social order, A View from the Bridge appears to tell a story of those at the bottom. Eddie Carbone, the play’s protagonist, is a second-generation immigrant and blue-collar worker. The other characters in the play occupy a similarly lower class position in their society. In contrast to the elevated poetic style in which tragic heroes typically speak, Eddie’s speech is colloquial and often crude.

Miller uses the contrast between his characters and setting and the elevated style of classical tragedy to subvert other elements of the genre. It is unclear, for example, whether Eddie has an epiphany, or moment of clarity, which is usually associated with tragic heroes. He seems to die while still denying that his refusal to either acknowledge or give up his love for Catherine is what has caused the catastrophes that have befallen him and his family. Whereas Greek tragedy presents heroes who are fundamentally noble being undone by a single tragic flaw, Eddie is a morally ambiguous character. Alfieri describes him as a “good man,” but some of his actions and comments are petty or manipulative in a way that suggests his goodness is not so unsullied.

Nevertheless, Miller does intend for the audience to draw parallels with Greek tragedy. By placing the form and structure of such tragedy within a modern working-class context, he calls into question the definitions of nobility, goodness, and the relationship between class and tragedy. As he did in his earlier American tragedy, Death of a Salesman (1949), Miller asserts that tragedy and pathos are not the preserve of princes but can be found in ordinary life as well.