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A View from the Bridge
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Act II, Pages 418-439Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Pages 418-439 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses a man’s quasi-incestuous desire for his surrogate daughter. It also contains references to anti-immigrant sentiment.
Introducing the next scene, Alfieri says that it is the day before Christmas Eve. With both Marco and Eddie out at work and Beatrice shopping, it is the first time that Catherine and Rodolpho have been alone in the house together. In the living room, Catherine asks Rodolpho if he would consider going to live in Italy once they are married. Rodolpho explains that this idea is absurd because of the poverty there. Catherine asks if, hypothetically, he would take her back to Italy if they had to go. Rodolpho responds that he would not marry Catherine if it meant going back. He is insulted by the suggestion that he would “carry on my back the rest of my life a woman I didn’t love just to be an American” (420). Rodolpho asks Catherine why she is still scared of Eddie, and Catherine explains that she has known him all her life, and still cares about him. Rodolpho says that if one holds a bird in one’s hands and “she grows and wishes to fly” (421), one must let that bird go. Rodolpho and Catherine then go into the bedroom together.
Shortly afterward, Eddie comes home early from work, drunk, and sees Catherine and Rodolpho emerge from the bedroom. Eddie tells Rodolpho to leave his house. When Catherine tries to leave as well, Eddie grabs and kisses her. Rodolpho tries to stop Eddie, exclaiming “she’ll be my wife” (422), and when the two men scuffle Eddie restrains Rodolpho and kisses him. Distraught, Catherine tears at Eddie’s face until he releases Rodolpho. Rodolpho leaves the apartment. Four days later, Eddie shows up at Alfieri’s offices for the last time. Eddie tells Alfieri that Rodolpho is not strong enough to break his grip and claims that this is proof that something is not right with him. He then tells Alfieri that Catherine is planning to marry Rodolpho and asks for his advice. Alfieri’s final counsel to Eddie is that he cannot stop Catherine and that both natural and human law are against him. Further, Alfieri warns Eddie that if he continues down his current path, he “won’t have a friend in the world” (474).
After meeting with Alfieri, Eddie goes to a nearby phone booth and rings the immigration bureau to report two undocumented immigrants staying at his address.
Act II, Pages 426-439 Summary
Eddie returns home to find Beatrice taking down Christmas decorations. She tells Eddie that Rodolpho and Marco have moved upstairs to another flat. Eddie is still angry, insisting that he has been disrespected and that he does not want to talk with Beatrice anymore about what he does in the bedroom. Beatrice then tells Eddie that Rodolpho and Catherine are getting married the following week and advises him to apologize and give her his blessing. They can all then, she says, celebrate together. At that moment Catherine comes from upstairs and tells Eddie that he can attend her wedding if he likes.
Beatrice then reveals that two other recent Italian immigrants are staying in the upstairs apartment with Rodolpho and Marco. Eddie suddenly realizes that his betrayal of the cousins could affect another family. He desperately urges Catherine to get rid of the other men. Unfortunately, at that moment two immigration officers storm into the house, demanding to know where the immigrants are. Beatrice realizes what Eddie has done as the officers go upstairs and come back down with Marco, Rodolpho, and the two other men. As the four men are dragged away, Marco momentarily breaks free of the officers and spits in Eddie’s face. Then, as Eddie is shouting at Marco, Louis, Mike, the uncle of the two other men, and other neighbors gather in the street, Marco points at Eddie and proclaims, “that one! He killed my children!” (433).
Several days later, Alfieri is with Rodolpho, Marco, and Catherine in a prison reception room. Alfieri tells Marco that he can get bail to go to Catherine and Rodolpho’s wedding if he promises not to attack Eddie when released. Marco reluctantly agrees to this deal and Catherine tells Rodolpho and Marco that she will collect Beatrice and meet the brothers at the church. Later, in Eddie’s apartment, Beatrice tells Eddie that she wants to go to Catherine’s wedding. Eddie refuses to let her go unless Marco apologizes to him. Overhearing their conversation, Catherine comes into the room and confronts Eddie, calling him a “rat.”
Rodolpho enters and warns Eddie that Marco is coming. Rodolpho apologizes to Eddie and tries to kiss his hand in the hope that a reconciliation between the two will save Eddie from being killed by Marco. However, Eddie snatches his hand away from Rodolpho and prepares to fight. Marco arrives in the street outside and calls out for Eddie. Eddie goes to meet Marco outside and demands an apology for slandering him. As a crowd gathers to watch, Marco and Eddie fight. Marco knocks Eddie down, but Eddie pulls a knife and lunges toward Marco as Marco steps back. Marco manages to grab Eddie’s arm and turn the knife inward against Eddie, stabbing him in the chest. Beatrice goes to hold Eddie in her arms as he dies. Alfieri, who was in the crowd watching, gives a final speech in which he says that there was something “perversely pure” about Eddie Carbone and that this is why he will mourn him (439).
Act II, Pages 418-439 Analysis
Eddie’s tragic demise represents the culmination of the themes and tensions that have built throughout the play. When Eddie kisses Catherine, he violates the taboo against incest by forcing himself on his surrogate daughter. When he kisses Rodolpho, he enacts the gender roles he has been projecting onto himself and Rodolpho, weaponizing his perceived natural masculinity against what he views as Rodolpho’s unnatural femininity. When he calls the immigration authorities on Rodolpho and Marco to stop Rodolpho from marrying Catherine, he violates the moral laws of hospitality that his immigrant community venerates above the official laws of the state. After these transgressions, his ostracization and death is inevitable according to the genre conventions of classical tragedy. Yet despite the grievous wrongs he does to Catherine and Rodolpho, Eddie is offered several chances to atone for his actions.
The first of these opportunities comes from Alfieri. Having heard about how Eddie humiliated Rodolpho, and having grasped Eddie’s love for Catherine, Alfieri neither shuns him nor alerts anyone else. Instead, Alfieri gives Eddie a clear warning and advice: “let her go. And bless her,” or “a river will drown you” (424). Likewise, Catherine forgives Eddie and gives him an opportunity for reconciliation and reintegration into the community by inviting him to her wedding. Finally, even after Eddie has insulted him and tried to get him deported, Rodolpho still attempts to save Eddie’s life. He kisses Eddie’s hand in supplication and offers to take the blame for the whole situation so that Eddie can avoid fighting Marco without losing face.
Yet Eddie rejects Alfieri’s advice, Catherine’s forgiveness, and Rodolpho’s olive branch, remaining fixed on his fatal course. Eddie is unwilling to “settle for half” (438), as Alfieri puts it. He insists that “I want my name!” (437). Eddie insists that he will only back down if Marco admits in front of the neighborhood that he was wrong to accuse Eddie of informing on him. He wants the reputation he destroyed through his actions to be publicly rehabilitated by Marco. Eddie’s demand reveals that he only partly understands his own errors. He recognizes that by turning his guests into the official legal system, he has violated his community’s moral laws, making himself a pariah. The fact that he wants Marco to take the blame rather than apologizing and atoning for his own actions, however, shows that the fatal flaw that truly drives Eddie’s downfall is his inability to face up to his own actions.
Eddie’s inability to acknowledge his errors also manifests in the other driving impulse behind his actions: his passion for Catherine. As Beatrice comes to see, it is not just his “name” that Eddie wants: “[Y]ou want somethin’ else […] and you can never have her” (437). Eddie’s deepest and most inexpressible desire is to have his love for Catherine permitted and acknowledged in defiance of the natural laws against sexual love within families. This is why Eddie is unable to accept any of the opportunities offered to him to atone and save himself. While those opportunities would heal the rifts in his family and community, they would make it impossible for him ever to be with Catherine. Ultimately, Eddie values his forbidden passion above family, community, and moral and official law.
It is in this sense that Eddie can be understood as a tragic hero. In the face of ostracization and physical harm, he remains committed to his passion. Alfieri’s epithet for Eddie, “perversely pure” (439), encapsulates his tragic flaw: He has a single-minded dedication to a perverse passion—his semi-incestuous love for Catherine—and he is perversely unwilling to bend even when both he and his family are faced with dire consequences. Like the hero of a Greek tragedy, he must inevitably be destroyed as punishment for transgressing natural and human laws. Yet the fact that Eddie had chances to atone for his sins adds a uniquely American dimension to Miller’s tragedy, reflecting America’s culturally Christian values of redemption and second chances that are not present in the original Greek tragedies.
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