A View from the Bridge: Writer's Methods and Techniques (Edexcel IGCSE English Literature)

Writer's Methods and Techniques

Writer’s methods and techniques refers to anything the writer does on purpose to create meaning. The most successful responses will discuss the importance of language, form and structure by making explicit reference to Miller’s use of literary techniques. Higher-mark IGCSE responses take a “whole-text” approach to the writer’s methods and techniques, so aim to draw on evidence from across the play and consider Miller’s overall aims.

Remember to refer to evidence from the text for every point that you make, and explain how the use of specific techniques affects the audience (not the reader).

There are a number of methods and techniques used in A View from the Bridge, including: 

• Symbolism

• Dialogue 

• Foreshadowing

• Greek tragedy

Symbolism

Two of the most significant symbols in A View from the Bridge are also the simplest: Brooklyn Bridge, from which the play takes its title, and Eddie’s chair, which only Marco is able to lift with one hand at the end of Act I:

• The Brooklyn Bridge overlooks the Red Hook area of New York, where the play is set, an area that Alfieri describes as “the slum that faces the bay”

• Connecting Brooklyn to affluent Manhattan, the bridge marks the gap between the rich and the poor in 1940s New York:

  • It therefore also represents the divide between Red Hook’s Italian-American community and the wider city population

  • The bridge is also a point of connection, though: it represents how Red Hook’s immigrant population, despite having its own culture and rules, is nevertheless subject to the same laws that connect the rest of the city

  • The bridge mirrors Alfieri’s role in the tragedy:

    • Alfieri talks directly to the audience throughout the play (he makes this clear by using the pronoun “you” several times in his opening monologue), but is also part of the play’s events

    • He is therefore a link between the audience and characters, drawing them into the story and emphasising its relevance 

  • One could suggest that the bridge, which overlooks the Red Hook area, represents an objective distance from which to view the play’s action:

    • The audience’s objectivity allows them to consider the play’s events as a whole and judge the characters on their own merits

    • Like Alfieri, though, this distance from events renders the audience powerless to prevent the tragedy from taking place

• After Eddie strikes Rodolpho when attempting to teach him how to box, Marco lifts a chair above Eddie’s head to demonstrate that he is stronger than Eddie: 

  • In Miller’s stage directions, Marco lifts the chair and an innocent and commonplace object resembles “a weapon over Eddie’s head”:

    • This represents the danger that Marco poses to Eddie

  • The curtain closes on this tableaux of Marco’s physical dominance over Eddie, foreshadowing Eddie’s downfall at the climax of the tragedy

  • It is important that this scene takes place in Eddie’s home and centres around one of Eddie’s chairs, an image of domesticity:

    • The chair could be seen to represent Eddie’s household as a whole, as Eddie’s failure to lift the chair reflects the loss of control he has over his family

    • Marco’s display of strength suggests that Eddie’s own household is turning against him

Dialogue

• Miller’s dialogue is particularly effective at revealing character and heightening the audience's emotional engagement with the tragedy

• Alfieri’s language is sometimes wry and humorous:

  • For example, when he describes the crate of whisky that slipped “from a net while being unloaded”), but it is always thoughtful and intelligent

  • His language differentiates him from the characters he interacts with, highlighting his objective distance from the events taking place

• Alfieri also sometimes speaks in a colourful, poetic fashion:

  • For example, when he describes how “the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea” and links Red Hook to “Calabria” and “Syracuse”:

    • Doing this gives the scene an importance that indicates the timeless relevance of the play’s events

• Marco’s language is economical, and his lines tend to consist of short, abrupt sentences, suggesting his character as a serious, earnest man:

  • The most powerful image of the play, the culmination of of Act I, is instigated by Marco’s simple question: “Can you lift this chair?”:

    • One brief line is enough to overturn the balance of power in the play

• Catherine’s language shows a growing confidence as her relationship with Rodolpho develops and she begins to escape Eddie’s control:

  • She instigates her dance with Rodolpho at the end of Act I, and her use of imperatives in Act II show that she is ready for a sexual relationship with Rodolpho: 

    • “Teach me. I don't know anything, teach me, Rodolpho, hold me”

• Eddie tends to speak in abrupt, uncomplicated sentences that do not allow him to develop his thoughts:

  • On occasions where he feels uncomfortable (such as when Beatrice accuses him of not being a proper husband to her), these short sentences represent him trying to evade scrutiny

  • Later in the play, his sentence structure demonstrates his raw passion and makes him almost inarticulate:

    • “He knows that ain’t right. To do that? To a man? Which I put my roof over their head…?”

Foreshadowing

• The story told by Eddie and Beatrice of Vinny Bolzano, the child who “snitched” on his illegal immigrant uncle, resonates throughout the rest of the play:

  • It foreshadows Eddie informing the Immigration Bureau about Marco and Rodolpho

• Eddie and Beatrice use judgemental language when describing Bolzano:

  • This highlights the seriousness of Bolzano’s offence against the community and the significance of the consequences that Bolzano suffered

  • This increases the audience’s sense of horror in Act II when Eddie prepares to make the same mistake

• There is irony in Eddie’s disdain for Bolzano, as the audience see him become what he hates by the end of the play:

  • The story of Vinny Bolzano effectively demonstrates the difference between statutory law and the Italian code of honour that leads to Eddie’s death 

• From Alfieri’s first speech, in which he describes the play’s “bloody course”, the audience are given the impression that Eddie is doomed:

  • In later speeches, Alfieri describes Eddie as “like a dark figure walking down a hall toward a certain door … I knew where he was going to end”:

    • Lines such as these create a kind of dramatic irony, as the audience learn the consequences of Eddie’s decisions long before the characters on stage do

• In his speeches to the audience, Alfieri only ever refers to Eddie in the past tense: 

  • For example, “I will never forget how dark the room became when he looked at me, his eyes were like tunnels”:

    • By describing it as something that has already occurred, the audience are continually reminded that Eddie’s death is a foregone conclusion

Greek tragedy

• In its form and structure, A View from the Bridge resembles a classical Greek tragedy:

  • The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defined “tragedy” as a story in which the action moves towards catastrophe, involving a sudden reversal of the hero’s fortunes from happiness to misery and culminating almost invariably in his death

• A tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is neither pre-eminently virtuous nor completely evil: the reversal of his fortune is brought about by some tragic “flaw” in his character or “error of judgement”:

  • His (and classical tragic heroes were always a “he”) nature and social position leads audiences to identify with his plight

  • The hero is ultimately brought to some measure of self-knowledge: often on the very brink of death he will see his situation as it really is 

  • The play finally arouses in an audience “pity and fear” en route to a feeling of catharsis (a purging or a purification of feeling)

• Eddie, the play’s protagonist, is therefore modelled after the tragic hero archetype, and possesses all of the required characteristics:

  • Hamartia: a flaw or error in judgement

  • Peripeteia: a reversal of fortune brought about because of the hero’s error in judgement

  • Anagnorisis: the discovery or recognition that the reversal was brought about by the hero’s own actions

  • Hubris: excessive pride

• Alfieri serves as the Chorus to the tragedy:

  • In Greek drama, the Chorus was a figure (or group of figures) that interrupted the action of the play to comment on the story, addressing the audience and emphasising the role of fate

  • The Chorus traditionally represented ordinary people in their attitudes to the action that they witnessed and their role was to explain the events taking place:

    • As Alfieri comments on the events of the play he reiterates his frustration at being unable to change them

    • As Chorus, he is outside the action and is possessed with knowledge beyond the other characters, but remains powerless to alter fate

Sources

Miller, A. (2010). A View From the Bridge. Penguin.