Alfieri a View from the Bridge
Discuss the character and role of Alfieri in A View from the Bridge paying particular attention to the contributions he makes to the audience’s understanding of the issues of the play.
Alfieri’s character and role in A view from the Bridge is a very important one he sets the scene and environment and is an engaged narrator helping the audience understand the play. Arthur Miller has used the characteristics in Alfieri to help us understand the background information an overlook of the play almost to unfold the play to the audience. Alfieri is the best character to do this because he is a lawyer and should know best, he is unable to take a side which is how he manages to create tension and emotion for the audience and the characters. Alfieri also gives us the feeling that he is retelling the story, because he mostly talks in a past tense.
The play begins and ends with the narrator, the lawyer Alfieri, directly addressing the audience from his office. Alfieri’s opening speech directly relates to the events that will unfold throughout the play, set in Brooklyn. Alfieri tells us how they consider ‘to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connection with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close.’(Miller, p4) This gives the audience a clear understanding that the play is going to be of tragedy and disaster. Alfieri not only discusses the here and now but also the history of the area he thinks this attitude lies in ‘three thousand years of distrust.’(Miller, p4) He proclaims that: ‘justice is very important here.’ (Miller, p4) Finally he explains how he mostly deals with longshoreman and their wives, fathers and grandfathers in compensation cases, evictions and petty squabbles, however ‘every few years there is still a case,’ that is different from the everyday petty troubles, ‘This one’s name was Eddie Carbone. Brooklyn Bridge to the breakwater were the open sea begins.’(Miller, p4)
Alfieri purposely talks to the audience
Alfieri’s character and role in A view from the Bridge is a very important one he sets the scene and environment and is an engaged narrator helping the audience understand the play. Arthur Miller has used the characteristics in Alfieri to help us understand the background information an overlook of the play almost to unfold the play to the audience. Alfieri is the best character to do this because he is a lawyer and should know best, he is unable to take a side which is how he manages to create tension and emotion for the audience and the characters. Alfieri also gives us the feeling that he is retelling the story, because he mostly talks in a past tense.
The play begins and ends with the narrator, the lawyer Alfieri, directly addressing the audience from his office. Alfieri’s opening speech directly relates to the events that will unfold throughout the play, set in Brooklyn. Alfieri tells us how they consider ‘to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connection with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close.’(Miller, p4) This gives the audience a clear understanding that the play is going to be of tragedy and disaster. Alfieri not only discusses the here and now but also the history of the area he thinks this attitude lies in ‘three thousand years of distrust.’(Miller, p4) He proclaims that: ‘justice is very important here.’ (Miller, p4) Finally he explains how he mostly deals with longshoreman and their wives, fathers and grandfathers in compensation cases, evictions and petty squabbles, however ‘every few years there is still a case,’ that is different from the everyday petty troubles, ‘This one’s name was Eddie Carbone. Brooklyn Bridge to the breakwater were the open sea begins.’(Miller, p4)
Alfieri purposely talks to the audience
Bibliography: Miller, A,1955 , A View From The Bridge, London, A & C Black publishers, 2010 p 4,18,27,38,39,43,44,53,73,79