A View from the Bridge

“[A]s the parties tell me what the trouble is, the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea.”

Alfieri explains how most of the cases he deals with are humdrum and dull, revolving around minor work or family issues. However, occasionally he gets a case that puts him in mind of something more ancient and tragic. The sea here symbolizes the idea of new and exciting possibilities but also the Mediterranean world of Alfieri’s past, with its links to Greek tragedy.

“When your father’s house burned down I didn’t end up on the floor?”

Waiting for Beatrice’s cousins, Eddie reminds Beatrice of the time they had to sleep on the floor after her father stayed with them and took their bed when his house burnt down. In one sense, Eddie’s comment is a warning to Beatrice about the dangers of being too hospitable. On another level, this remark reflects Eddie’s fears that Beatrice’s cousins will take advantage of him and that his life will be disrupted.

“I want you to be with different kind of people.”

This is the stated reason Eddie gives for his hostility toward the idea of Catherine taking the job she has been offered at a nearby company. According to Eddie, this job will put her in contact with other working-class and local people. In contrast, what he wanted for her was to gain upward social mobility through her education so that she could mix with a socially “higher” type of person. However, Eddie’s comment also betrays an anxiety that Catherine will be leaving the house and mixing with other potential romantic partners.

“You lived in a house all your life, what do you know about it?”

In response to Eddie’s remarks to Catherine that she should not trust people she meets at work, as they will just want to use her, Beatrice tells Catherine to be herself. Eddie responds in turn by putting Beatrice down and suggesting that she does not know anything about the outside world. Eddie’s comment is an expression of the simmering tension between him and Beatrice over the issue of letting Catherine leave home. His comment is also indicative of Eddie’s idea that understanding of the world is gained fundamentally through economic work.

“And they grabbed him in the kitchen and pulled him down the stairs.”

At Eddie’s prompting, Beatrice retells Catherine the story of a teenager, Vinny, who informed his own uncle to immigration services. He was then brutally beaten up by his own brothers and ostracized. The story is intended to warn Catherine not to speak to anyone about the cousins. However, the tale is also a tragic and ironic foreshadowing of the fate that will befall Eddy.

“He was as good a man as he had to be in a life that was hard and even.”

Alfieri describes Eddie before the scene where the cousins arrive. This comment emphasizes Eddie’s status as a tragic hero. Like other classical tragic heroes, Eddie is framed as an essentially good and noble character undone by one central blindness or flaw. In Eddie’s case, the flaw is his unacknowledged love for Catherine. As with other tragic heroes, it is his goodness and nobility outside of this flaw that allows us to sympathize with him and feel pathos.

“Because we never had no singers here […] and all of a sudden there’s a singer in the house.”

When Rodolpho starts singing “Paper Doll” after Catherine asks if he knows jazz, Eddie quickly shuts him down. Eddie’s pretext for doing this is that they have never had a singer in the house before so the sudden sound of one would arouse suspicion among the neighbors. However, the real reason for Eddie’s anxiety about the singing is his dawning sense that Catherine is impressed by it and that Rodolpho is a rival for Catherine’s love. Symbolically, Eddie’s comment betrays an anxiety regarding how Rodolpho’s arrival is going to upset the existing equilibrium of the household and the relationship dynamics within it.

“All actresses they want to be around here.”

After telling Catherine to remove her high heels, which provokes resentment from Catherine and Beatrice, Eddie tries to lighten the mood with a joking remark. Eddie’s comment is a way of evading the real reason that Catherine was wearing heels, which was to express her sexuality in front of the cousins, by dismissing it as a form of childish play-acting. His remark also highlights his identification of femininity with performance and prefigures his questioning of Rodolpho’s masculinity because he is a singer.

“When am I gonna be a wife again, Eddie?”

While Eddie is waiting for Catherine and Rodolpho to return from the cinema, Beatrice asks Eddie why he is not sleeping with her. Eddie’s excuse is that he has been unsettled since the arrival of the cousins. However, Beatrice points out that the problem has been going on for months and the cousins have only been there a couple of weeks. Beatrice shows with her question, and the timing of it, the correct insight that Eddie not sleeping with her is due to his unacknowledged love for Catherine. The comment also indicates how Eddie’s obsession is increasingly disrupting normal family dynamics.

“You take one look at him—everybody’s happy.”

Mike says this to Eddie about Rodolpho and the reaction he provokes from people working with him. What Mike says might merely be a comment on how Rodolpho is a well-liked, albeit eccentric, character on the piers, who has a talent for making people laugh and lightening the mood. However, Eddie’s paranoia about Rodolpho causes him to view Mike’s comments as suggesting that Rodolpho is a figure of ridicule on the piers and that this ridicule reflects poorly on Eddie.

“If it was a prince came here for you it would be no different.”

When Beatrice talks with Catherine about her developing relationship with Rodolpho, she tells Catherine that she cannot let Eddie’s dislike of Rodolpho get in the way. She points out that Eddie has never liked any of the men she has known. Beatrice correctly intuits that Eddie’s criticism of Rodolpho has less to do with Rodolpho himself and more to do with Rodolpho being a love rival for Catherine and Eddie’s fear of losing her.

“You still walk around in front of him in your slip.”

Discussing Catherine’s ship with Eddie, Beatrice advises Catherine to set boundaries and to behave less like a young girl in front of him. In one sense, what Beatrice says is sound advice. Catherine must see that she must modify her behavior with Eddie, and sacrifice some intimacy with him if she wants to be treated differently. At the same time, though, Beatrice’s remarks betray her own jealousy over Catherine’s closeness with Eddie and reveal an ulterior motive in the advice that she gives.

“[I]f you came in the house and you didn’t know who was singin’, you wouldn’t be lookin’ for him you be lookin’ for her.”

Eddie tries to explain to Alfieri what he finds unsettling about Rodolpho. Key to his account is the claim that Rodolpho not only sings but that his singing can be confused with that of a woman. In this way, Eddie’s suspicions regarding Rodolpho center on the fact that Rodolpho does not conform to conventional working-class notions of masculinity. Eddie betrays his anxiety about his own masculinity.

“I take the blankets off my bed for him, and he takes and puts his dirty filthy hands on her like a goddam thief!”

In Eddie’s meeting with Alfieri, he tries desperately to assert that some kind of crime must have been committed by Rodolpho when he became romantically involved with Catherine. Eddie says that he has given Rodolpho hospitality, yet he has lost Catherine. However, despite his perception of the injustice of this situation, Eddie is unable to see that he has no recourse to the law. Eddie’s unawareness to the nature and limits of the law, and his inability to accept them, is one of the flaws that will lead to his downfall.

“But if I could cook, if I could sing, if I could make dresses, I wouldn’t be on the waterfront.”

Hearing from Marco that Rodolpho is a good cook, as well as a singer, pushes an irate Eddie over the edge, leading him to say that Rodolpho should not be working on the piers. Eddie tries to backtrack and claims that what he meant was that with so many talents Rodolpho could do better than working on the waterfront. However, the true meaning of Eddie’s remark is clear. Namely, Rodolpho’s association with, and aptitude in, feminine skills and activities makes him unfit for real “masculine” work, and his presence on the waterfront threatens and embarrasses Eddie.

“You think I would carry on my back the rest of my life a woman I didn’t love just to be an American? It’s so wonderful? You think we have no tall buildings in Italy?”

When Catherine, repeating Eddie’s concern about Rodolpho, seeks reassurance from Rodolpho that he does not just want to marry her for a US passport, Eddie is enraged. He suggests that Catherine’s, and by extension Eddie’s, insinuation that he would marry a woman just to be a US citizen is an insult to his dignity. He resents the patronizing assumption that he must find America and New York awe-inspiring and suggests that the only thing about New York that is superior to Italy is the existence of work. In this way, Rodolpho is a mouthpiece for the frustrations of immigrants to the US in response to the prejudice and hostility that they often face.

“Then why don’t she be a woman?”

Catherine tries to explain to Rodolpho that it is not as easy as it seems to leave Eddie, a man she has grown up with and loves as a father. She also explains her resentment at Beatrice’s advice to behave differently around Eddie, suggesting another problem is Beatrice’s inability to satisfy Eddie properly. However, what Catherine’s comments reveal is that Catherine is part of the problem. Her emotional entanglement with Eddie and unwillingness to enact clear boundaries with him have contributed to Eddie’s passion for her and his hatred of Rodolpho.

“Watch your step, submarine. By rights they oughta throw you back in the water.”

Eddie says this to Rodolpho after he has found that Catherine and Rodolpho have slept together and he tells Rodolpho to leave. In one sense, Eddie’s remark is a naked threat that Rodolpho will face violence if he attempts to come back and see Catherine. At the same time, his comment also reveals the crystallization, around his hatred of Rodolpho, of anti-immigrant sentiment, and his identification of Rodolpho and Marco with something alien and hostile.

“Even those who understand will turn against you, even the ones who feel the same will despise you.”

This is Alfieri’s final warning to Eddie to stop the course that he is on and to accept that he can do nothing about Catherine wanting to marry Rodolpho. Alfieri is warning Eddie that informing on Rodolpho to immigration services will result in ostracization even by those who sympathize with his plight. Alfieri suggests that if Eddie pursues his passion for Catherine and his betrayal of Rodolpho he will end up alone.

“You never mix yourself with somebody else’s family!”

Eddie is aghast when he hears that two other immigrants have been moved into the upstairs apartment where Rodolpho and Marco are staying. Eddie’s horror at hearing this, and his exclamation, reflects his realization that his actions in betraying the cousins to immigration services have also implicated someone else’s family. At this moment Eddie realizes the full import of his actions, which will not just set him against Marco and Rodolpho but against the whole Red Hook community.

“The law? All the law is not in a book.”

After being arrested by immigration services and sent to prison, Alfieri tells Marco that he can be granted bail if he promises not to attack Eddie. Marco reluctantly agrees but questions why there is no law to punish Eddie’s act of betrayal. This leads Marco to question the official, codified law and to suggest that there is a “higher” or intuitive law that official law does not necessarily circumscribe. Marco’s comment reflects a deeper conflict in the play between the official law of a liberal state and an unwritten and intuitive law linked to the community and going back to traditional culture in Italy.

“I have made all our troubles.”

To help save Eddie and prevent the impending catastrophe, Rodolpho apologizes to Eddie in hopes that Marco might relent if he sees that Eddie and Rodolpho are reconciled. It is partly true that Rodolpho’s arrival was the catalyst for Eddie’s troubles, and by extension, everyone else’s, but Rodolpho’s statement also shows generosity and selflessness, given how Eddie has treated him. In this way Rodolpho proves himself to be the opposite of the self-interested or weak character Eddie painted him to be. At the same time, Eddie’s unwillingness to accept or even recognize the courage and self-sacrifice of this gesture, and to respond accordingly, finally condemns him.

“Who could give you your name? […] That’s not what you want.”

Rejecting Rodolpho’s conciliatory gesture, Eddie insists that he wants an apology from Marco for slandering him in front of the community. However, Beatrice recognizes that this apology is not really what Eddie wants, and indeed that no one can give him what he wants. What he truly desires is Catherine. Eddie’s willful ignorance to this fact is what constitutes his tragic flaw.