39 pages • 1 hour read
Arthur MillerA View from the Bridge
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Ocean and the Sea
In A View from the Bridge, the sea is associated with excitement, novelty, and adventure. Toward the end of Alfieri’s opening speech, he describes how every few years, “as the parties tell me what the trouble is, the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea” (379). For Alfieri, the sea signifies the blowing away of the humdrum world with which he is usually concerned, and the evocation of a more vital and ancient order of things, linked to his Mediterranean past. The sea also represents excitement and escape for Catherine. As she is asking Rodolpho whether he would move with her to Italy, she reminds him that “you’re always saying it’s so beautiful there, with the mountains and the ocean” (419). The ocean represents a rural and idyllic world, free from the complications of urban life and her increasingly oppressive emotional entanglement with Eddie.
However, the sea at the same time symbolizes danger. For example, Beatrice reminds Catherine about the “spider coming out of the bag” that Eddie brought home from the piers (387). The sea in this instance represents something out of which unknown and threatening forces can emerge. Beatrice’s story prefigures the arrival of the cousins from across the ocean and their upsetting of the equilibrium in Eddie’s house. For Eddie, further, Rodolpho is the ultimate manifestation of a disrupting alien force. As Eddie says, he “come out of the water and grab a girl for a passport” (438). He not only emerges from nowhere as a threat to Eddie’s relationship with Catherine but embodies, in Eddie’s eyes, everything disturbing about the new and the alien. He looks radically different from Eddie and the local men and, with his skills in singing and cooking, behaves differently as well. Thus, Eddie’s main wish is, as he says to Rodolpho that “they […] throw you back in the water” (423). To Eddie, the sea symbolizes not escape to somewhere new, but the chance to dump one’s problems somewhere out of sight where they might magically vanish.
Bridges
A View from the Bridge is set in Red Hook, “the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge” (379). As the play’s title and setting suggest, the symbol of the bridge, and bridges, is an important one in the drama. The bridge, like the boats that Eddie and the other men work on unloading, is a symbol of a connection between worlds and cultures. It represents the interpenetration of cultures and the way immigration allows for a crossover between urban American and rural Italian ways of life. At the same time, the bridge also represents the possibility of something new and better. For Marco and Rodolpho, this is the possibility of a life without extreme poverty and hunger. For a second-generation immigrant like Eddie, it is the possibility that Catherine might climb higher in American society. As he says, when questioning her desire to accept a job at a nearby firm, “I want you to be with different kind of people […] Maybe a lawyer’s office […] in New York in one of them nice buildings” (385).
Yet the bridge also represents a transitional state between places, times, and situations. This is especially evident in the character of Alfieri. As a lawyer in Red Hook, deals with “the petty troubles of the poor” (379), yet his income and professional status give him access to the middle-class society of New York. He is a first-generation immigrant from Italy, yet has lived in the US for half his life, embracing liberalism. He thus represents a bridge between the older and more tragic culture of the Old World and the modern, liberal culture of the New World. Thus, he is uniquely positioned to offer a perspective, or “view,” on the action and conflicts of the play. Alfieri in his liminal position is a “bridge” between the audience and the characters in the drama. Occupying the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, Alfieri can contextualize the tragedy of Eddie’s life and his love for Catherine.
The Gesture of Kissing
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses a man’s quasi-incestuous desire for his surrogate daughter.
The physical gesture of kissing has complex significance for the characters in A View from the Bridge. On the one hand, kissing, especially on the hand, demonstrates respect and the recognition of family ties. For example, Marco kisses Beatrice’s hand when he first arrives at Eddie’s house. Likewise, Lipari the butcher and his wife show their support for their nephews who have been arrested by publicly kissing them. Catherine kisses Rodolpho, Marco, and Alfieri in the prison reception room on the day of her wedding, symbolically accepting Rodolpho and Marco into her family. She also shows her respect for Alfieri.
Yet precisely because kissing within the Italian American Red Hook community is such a sacred rite, its abuse indicates something going severely wrong. When a drunk and incensed Eddie grabs and kisses Catherine and Rodolpho against their will, he violates the norms surrounding kissing. By kissing Catherine on the mouth, Eddie violates the taboo surrounding romantic relations between family members. Then, by kissing Rodolpho on the mouth, something which men are never supposed to do, Eddie shows his extreme disrespect for Rodolpho, symbolically emasculating him. Both acts signal Eddie’s alienation from the values and life of the Red Hook community, foreshadowing his betrayal of the community’s moral laws by calling the immigration authorities. It is in this context, that Rodolpho’s final conciliatory gesture with Eddie takes on even greater significance. Rodolpho apologizes to Eddie for disrespecting him by not asking for Catherine’s hand in marriage: “[I]t was wrong that I do not ask your permission. I kiss your hand” (437). By offering to kiss his hand, despite everything that Eddie has done, Rodolpho treats Eddie as a respected elder, symbolically offering to restore Eddie to the place in the community that he forfeited when he turned in his guests to the law. That Eddie spurns this offer, snatching his hand away, shows that Eddie cannot be reconciled and that he is literally and metaphorically committed to his fate.
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