meganv’s Blog

Arthur Miller’s “A View From The Bridge”  loyalty is a multiple layered theme that Miller works into the Red Hook community. Miller focuses on the loyalty of a ethnic group that has been forced out of their homeland due to crippling economic troubles. In the face of poverty, the ties between a group of people are the strongest. Miller’s places the setting of the play as a tight knit community that uses its own law and brand of justice, the Sicilian code of honor, to rule the community. All of the neighbors of the Cabrone family are still deeply connected to their Italian roots. Eddie is a outsider to his community because his loyalties lay with the government law rather than the community’s brand of justice.

What is so tragic for Eddie is the thing that he needs to continue living in the world, the love and respect of his niece Catherine, is also the tool for the demise of his family’s happiness. In the beginning of the play Eddie is already starting a downward spiral of his destruction because of his desire for Catherine that conflicts with the loyalty he carries as a husband and a paternal caretaker of his niece. Eddie’s affection for Catherine has already destroyed the happiness of Beatrice who is not allowed to fulfill her duties as wife because Eddie allows Catherine to do them. By the end of the play even Catherine’s happiness is taken away as Eddie breaks his own personal code of honor to sell out Marco and Rodolpho to the Immigration Officers. Eddie’s love for Catherine, which is deemed immoral and unnatural in the play’s society, drives him to sell out his honor and loyalty to the community in an attempt to keep Catherine from being taken away.

Miller uses his play as symbolism for the paranoia of communism that the McCarthy Era produced. Red Hook can be seen as the underground community of American communists that were under persecution during the 1950′s. Miller replicates his own personal dilemma of being called to the House Un-American Activities Committee and faced with the decision to name his fellow communists or be labeled as a un-American and a traitor. Eddie set in a parallel situation when he deliberates on whether or not he should turn his back on his family and community and be a good American citizen by turning in Marco and Rodolpho. While Miller refused to name names he makes  Eddie name his cousins as illegal immigrants to show the animal like behavior that the government was condoning during the 1950′s.

While I have never personally been in a situation where my American identity was put into question I can relate to the familial loyalty that is broken in the Cabrone family. Though never so severe, my family has had periods when sibling loyalty has been broken over favoritism or unjust punishment. Miller’s theme of naming names reminds me of children tattle taling on each other, which is seen as a traitorous action from the stand point of children. There is a thin line between telling the truth to adult authority and giving up your fellow playmate for adult praise.