Dramatic Devices Essay

How Does Miller Use Dramatic Devices to Show the Impact of the Arrival of Marco and Rodolfo in this scene?  In the play ‘A view from a bridge’ Miller uses many dramatic devices in many scenes. I am going to be looking at the dramatic devices miller uses to show the impact of the arrival of Marco and Rodolfo.  In the early 1950’s Italy was a very poor country because the economy was very slow to grow particularly in the south which was less industrialised. This meant that many Italians left Italy for America with the help of dockyard owners who knew that they may well get cheap labour from immigrants until they had paid for their passage over to America. Once they had paid their fare, the immigrants were left to make their own way. The play is set in this time in Brooklyn where the family the play is about, Eddie, Beatrice and their niece Catherine, lives. The family are awaiting the arrival of Beatrice’s two cousins Marco and Rodolfo who have illegally immigrated to America to seek a better life and to earn money to send home to their families  Before the arrival of the two cousins the family are just living normally. Eddie and Beatrice are having a few problems with their marriage which are only made worse as the play goes on. Eddie and Catherine have a very close relationship and she looks up to him like a father. Eddie is very protective of Catherine and does not want her to get a job, wear high heel, wear short skirts or even grow up at all. He has looked out for her like a daughter since he and Beatrice took her in. However he is seeing her less and less as a niece or a daughter and more like a woman. He is starting to question his feelings for her, and the arrival of a possible new love interest for Catherine does not please Eddie. Catherine and Beatrice are quite close and Beatrice is quite like a mother figure to Catherine. In the first scenes we see that Beatrice sticks up for Catherine when Catherine wants to get a job and Eddie does not want her too. We can see there is tension in the family before the two Italians arrive but their arrival does not help the tension in the family. From the scene where Marco and Rodolfo arrive we can foresee that something is going to happen and there is going to be problems, especially between Rodolfo, Catherine and Eddie. Towards the end of the scene Rodolfo and Catherine are mostly talking to each other and Catherine seems quite smitten with Rodolfo. Especially when she finds out what a good singer he is. ‘(enthralled) leave him finish, it’s beautiful’ Eddie sees this and dislikes the fact that Catherine is giving Rodolfo so much attention. He firstly stops Rodolfo singing ‘look, kid; you don’t want to be picked up do ya?’ The reality is Rodolfo probably would not get picked up but Eddie did not want him to sing because he did not want Rodolfo to please Catherine. After he has stopped Rodolfo singing he tells Catherine to take her high heels off, this embarrasses and angers Catherine. Beatrice sees what Eddie is doing and is also angry at him for it. ‘Beatrice watches her go and gets up; in passing, she gives Eddie a cold look, restrained only by strangers, and goes to the table to pour coffee’ this quotation from the stage directions tells us how Beatrice is annoyed with Eddie for putting Catherine down and also shows us how she looks out for Catherine. Rodolfo irritates Eddie again by saying ‘especially when they are so beautiful’ and indicates to Catherine. Eddie can see that something is going to happen between Catherine and Rodolfo and we can see this from the stage direction with says ‘his face puffed with trouble’ this tells us that he does not want something to happen between Catherine and Rodolfo. Marco and Rodolfo clearly have a good brotherly relationship and Marco seems to have some control over Rodolfo as he seems able to tell him what to do. From this we can see that if there was ever a problem for Rodolfo, Marco would help him and look out for him.