How far would you regard the play as a tragedy?
...s if someone overheard like the Immigration Bureau . Catherine dating Rodolpho doesn’t bother Beatrice at all as she does trust Rodolpho to be a smart guy and not gay because she tried to assure Eddie by saying “….He’s a nice fella, hard workin, he’s a good-lookin fella....Well he’s a kid; he doesn’t know how to behave himself yet…” but Eddie disagrees and says “You mean it’s alright with you? That’s gonna be her husband!”(From acts one) that is why Eddie doesn’t seem to be able to trust anyone, so he goes to see Alfieri who is his father’s lawyer. I think that Eddie has been influenced by his friends from the ship such as Louis and Mike who does agree with him is saying, “Yeah, that blonde one though-he’s got a good sense of humour, …an Yeah, I mean, he’s always makin remarks like y’know?”(From act one) Soon Eddie feels conscious as all the people who knew Rodolpho think he’s not right (gay), and only Catherine cannot see this which makes Eddie conscious as to what will happen to her. I think that Alfieri comes out of the play and into the audience to try and explain that Catherine is just another ordinary girl with quite an ordinary life but soon this ‘ordinary’ life of hers will soon change as these immigrants interfere with her and it could be trouble for the ‘hero’ of the play. I also acknowledge Eddie’s thoughts on why he’s suspicious about Rodolpho being gay but he does need to understand that it is the ‘law of nature’ to let Catherine go because she is officially 17 years old and she can even get a job of her own and earn a living. As Alfieri tries to explain to Eddie about the Law of nature by saying “There’s nothing illegal about a girl falling in love with an immigrant” Eddie responds back by saying that Rodolpho is just using her to get into America. I think Miller is trying to tell us that there is love between humans, for one another but these feelings could be wrong just like the sexual feelings Eddie has for Catherine. The love between Catherine and Rodolpho are right though. I think Miller tries to explain to us that love may not always be the right thing to follow, e.g. like the saying ‘the heart wants what the heart wants’ but although Eddie does not like to express his feelings, this ‘love’ for Catherine has not been hidden very well, and so it may end In a tragedy as well, losing not only Catherine, but Beatrice as well, which is linked in with the universal theme (which mean that it could happen to anyone) which will lead to death even to an ordinary guy like Eddie. I do find that it is Catherine to blame when Eddie has sexual feelings for her because she does lure him by running around in her underwear when he’s in the bathroom shaving because she is seventeen years old and is starting to have the ‘womanly’ figure, so she should have the common sense to know that because even Beatrice seems to notice as she reminds her, “Because you think you’re a baby. I told you fifty times already, you can’t act the way you act. You still walk around in front of him in your slip” and Beatrice seems to notice how she still acts if she is still a baby because when he comes home she throws herself at him, “But if you act like a baby and he be treatin’ you like a baby. Like when he comes home sometimes you throw yourself at him like when you were twelve years old”. I do think that Catherine do have some points of her own as she can blame Beatrice for not being a proper wife as she tells Rodolpho in act two, “ Then why don’t she be a women? I would make a man happy instead of goin’ at him all the time. I can tell a block away when he’s blue in his mind and just wants to talk to somebody quiet and nice…I can tell when he’s hungry or just want a beer before he even says anything. I know where his feet hurt him, I mean I know him and now I’m supposed to turn around and make a stranger out of him? I don’t know why I have to do that I mean?” which means that she seems to know more about him than Beatrice does even though she is his niece and Beatrice is his wife. Eddie refers Rodolpho as a ‘son of a bitch punk’ (act one) because Eddie now realises that Rodolpho is going to take Catherine away, once and for all. All these arguments will soon lead to a problem such as the fateful tragedy Eddie will soon face. I think that Eddie has no right to call Rodolpho a ‘son of a bitch punk as Rodolpho only came to America with his brother Marco to look for work and now he is not only in love with America but Catherine as well. To show how grown up Catherine really is, and how she is capable on being on her own she asks Rodolpho, “ You wanna dance Rodolpho?” referring to the song Paper doll, at this point Eddie freezes, leaving him speechless and stunned. Few weeks later Eddie asks Rodolpho and Marco to go to a boxing match, but Marco is slightly concerned as he knows what Eddie is trying to do, so Marco challenges Eddie to lift up the chair but he staggers and fails, but Marco kneels down and raises the chair higher and higher over his head and gives Eddie a look that he cannot forget. All these events contribute to the play being a tragedy and they all link to the ending. If the characters had done things differently the tragic ending may have been prevented. From this point onwards, I have an impression that Marco is telling Eddie that he is a lot stronger than him and if Eddie was going to try and ring the Immigration Bureau, Marco can always wrestle him back as he’s not afraid. There is also tension between Miller described each character as ordinary people but exaggerates Eddie slightly but that’s how it shows all the tension between him and Rodolpho which then this argument leads to a tragedy in act two making quite a dramatic structure. This shows how much, he wanted to hit Rodolpho as Eddie is jealous of him going out with Catherine, like Eddie had quoted, “Sure, he’s terrific! Look at him go! Now watch out, here I come Danish! At this point Rodolpho is on the floor” The audience may feel quite hesitant after act one as they probably know that Eddie will probably be the most tragic character out of the whole play. It also occurs to the audience that Eddie is also very jealous of Rodolpho because he does have wrong sexual feelings for Catherine. The audience also thinks that Eddie has no-one to talk to as he does not feel like he could trust anyone else apart from Alfieri as he is a lawyer and people respect lawyers like Alfieri stated, “You see how uneasily they nod to me? That’s because I am a lawyer. In this neighbourhood to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connexion with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close.” Act two begins with Catherine and Ralph finally alone in the house and Catherine ask him a fateful question, “Tell me something, i mean just tell me Roldphho, would you still want to do it if it turned out we had to go and live Italy, I mean just if it turned out that way?” Rodolpho replies, “This is your question or his question?” because he is furious, that Eddie has put thoughts into Catherine’s head as he think why does Catherine listen to Eddie so much? Why is she always on his side? Catherine is soon relieved that Rodolpho doesn’t think that way. When Eddie comes home one night very drunk and finds Catherine and Rodolpho in the bedroom together, he becomes furious and demands an explanation. This is the part when Eddie reaches over and shows his affection for Catherine and then reaches over to Rodolpho and kisses him to try and bring out that Rodolpho is really gay and not ‘manly’. All these feelings Eddie had kept inside him have finally come out, and cannot be changed. Soon Eddie goes to Alfieri to talk about the immigrants, but soon Alfieri tries to talk some sense into him by saying, “I heard what you told me, and I’m telling you what the answer is. I’m not only telling you now, I’m warning you, the law of nature!!!” When Alfieri states, ‘the law of nature’ he is referring to the fact that, it is the loyalty between friends and family, and you should not dishonour them. It is natural for fathers to let go off their children and the children should want to go and not to stand between them or else something disastrous will happen. This law is more important, than the law of the land. Alferei does have a catastrophic feeling that a something tragic will happen to Eddie, because he knows that the only way, Eddie can get rid of Rodolpho, is by ringing the immigration Bureau. Alfieri can do nothing to stop Eddie from ringing them. As Alfieri has predicted, Eddie went and rang the immigration Bureau and officers have already started to go to his house. I think that Eddie has caused himself into more trouble because he had rang the Bureau. I think his alternative was to let go of Catherine and let Rodolpho marry her, which then if Eddie did do, he would not end up in this chaos. His jealousy also ruins his pleasant relationship with him and Beatrice as they were deeply in love at first. Eddie also blames Be...