How far should we consider Eddie Carbone as a tragic hero



How far should we consider Eddie Carbone as a Tragic Hero

The study is related to the how far should we consider Eddie Carbone as a Tragic Hero. In this context, aristotle viewed Eddie Carbone as a Tragic Hero as he says “One who is neither villainous nor exceptionally virtuous, moving from happiness to misery through some frailty or error in judgement”. On the other hand, Arthur Miller illustrated Eddie Carbone ad as a 'A view from a Bridge'. Eddie Carbone is a tortured longshoreman in Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge. The source of Eddie's agony is his beautiful, young niece, Catherine, with whom he has become fixated.

The feelings of Eddie explode when Catherine falls in love with one of his wife's cousins, an illegal alien who has moved into the Carbones' Brooklyn apartment. Moreover, Miller modeled A View from the Bridge after Greek tragedy: He made the lawyer, Alfieri, the leader of a dramatic chorus, mimicking the ancient Greek dramas of Sophocles and Euripides. As a result, it is Alfieri's view that defines the action of the play and its unfolding. He remains the play's narrator throughout, even as he relates scenes to which he was not a witness, and he warns the audience from the beginning that he is powerless to divert the action from its anticipated bloody course.

In addition to the chorus, the play incorporates a classical Greek temporal structure: The narrative unfolds at an unusually rapid pace within the conventions of mid-twentieth century American drama. It incorporates few frills; instead, the action of the play is rapid and unrelenting. Besides it, much has been written about the impact upon Miller of the anticommunist witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the hearings conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (also known as HUAC).

It is well known that Miller was responding to these events when he wrote The Crucible (1953), which allegorized the hunt for communists in its tale of the witch trials conducted in Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. It could be argued, however, that A View from the Bridge was an even more important play for Miller in his quest to understand and respond to McCarthyism. In adition to this, if truth be told, Miller used the character of Eddie Carbone as a reference in his statements to HUAC when he was called to testify and name associates known to him to be communists. Unlike the central character of his drama, Miller did not point his finger at anyone, and he consequently remained on the high moral ground that Eddie Carbone forfeits by his actions in the play (Miller, Marino, 2010).

Eddie goes to Alfieri, desperate for some "law" that can protect Catherine from Rodolpho's advances, but he cannot see the inexorable forces of passion and revenge that transcend the law (Enoch Brater, 2005). Miller notes in his writings about A View from the Bridge that he ...