Alfieri In Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge

The modern drama, A View from the Bridge, written by Arthur Miller, is told from Alfieri’s perspective. Since the beginning of the first scene, he is established as the narrator for the story. In this essay, I will be analyzing the role of Alfieri in the play through a careful analysis of Miller’s stage directions for Alfieri’s character and his cryptic speeches in between the scenes. Fate and/or predestination is a predominant theme in A View from the Bridge, and Miller uses Alfieri’s character to depict this theme by morphing his character into a solitary Greek chorus. The role of traditional Greek choruses in Greek tragedies include commenting on the characters’ actions and thoughts from an outsider’s perspective without any biases clouding their judgement, guiding the characters’ choices as they moved through the scenes, but mainly to predict the character’s fate, destiny, and/or demise to the audience throughout the play.
Similarly to how traditional Greek choruses would’ve contributed to the plays, Alfieri acted as the “prophet” …show more content…
In A View from the Bridge, Alfieri is the conduit into the tale — he guides us through the emotions involved when viewing the play. In the last paragraph of the play, Alfieri concludes the bloody tale. He summarized the audiences’ feelings towards Eddie when he said, “I mourn him with a certain…alarm.” (Miller, 86) This could mean that even though he realizes it’s illogical to mourn Eddie because of the actions he has taken, Alfieri still does, and he’s unclear how he should feel about the emotion. This perfectly summarizes my feelings for Eddie, as even though I hate the things he’s done, I can’t help but feel pity for the things he had to go through, and his tragic