A view from the bridge (Arthur Miller) - page 4
Keywords: Bridge, A view, English, arthur miller, gcse,
By boomanu on 12/05/2008
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 4 of 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
up tension throughout this play and their not all by speech, there are plenty of occasions when just a pause can build tension, one of these times is when Eddie is talking to Beatrice, he says ‘He’s lucky, believe me. (slight pause. He looks away, then back to Beatrice.) That’s why the water front is no place for him.’ During this part Rodolfo and Catherine have been dancing, I believe that when he says Rodolfo is lucky he was thinking that he was lucky to be dancing with Catherine and the slight pause was because he couldn’t quickly think of an excuse for saying why Rodolfo was lucky. At the beginning of this paragraph I mentioned that not all the tension in this play is created by speech, which is true but a lot of tension is created by speech and the hidden text underneath it, one of these occasions is when Eddie is talking about oranges and lemons,
‘Eddie: I heard they paint the oranges to make them look orange.
Marco: Paint?
Eddie: Yeah, I head they grow like green.
Marco: No, in Italy the oranges are orange
Rodolfo: Lemons are green.’
I believe that Eddie is referring to Rodolfo when saying this because oranges are sweet yet lemons are sour, he is saying that Rodolfo is pretending to be sweet and nice on the outside but he is really horrible and sour on the inside. He is saying that Rodolfo is a lemon that has been painted to look like an orange. This raises tension because Rodolfo and Marco make Eddie look stupid in front of Beatrice and Catherine which makes him angry and it seems like he might suddenly turn violent.
Tension isn’t just built from what we can hear or sometimes what we can’t, it is also built by the actions of the actors/actresses, there are many example of this throughout the play, one of them is just before he starts to teach Rodolfo how to box, ‘(He has been unconsciously twisting the newspaper into a tight roll. They are all regarding him now; he senses he is exposing the issue and he is driven in.) I would be someplace else. I would be like in a dress store. (He has bent the rolled paper and it suddenly tears in two. He suddenly gets up and pulls his pants up over his belly and goes to Marco.)’ I believe that the newspaper
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