Catherine Triangle Essay

miss the docks area of Brooklyn is the massive Brooklyn Bridge, which spans New Yorks East River and which joins the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. In the title, moth miller suggests he is giving the audience a bewitch of the community which lies under the bridge. The title also suggests that the audience is given a panoramic view of the scene, some(prenominal) as a captain of a ship has an well-rounded view from the vessels bridge. The action of the play takes place more often than not in an apart custodyt in a tene custodyt block in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn. In the play, Alfieri, the lawyer, set forths the area asthe spend that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge and as the esophagus of New York sw wholeowing the tonnage of the world. It was a socially deprived area, where succeeding generations of immigrants from Europe, twain legal and prohibited, found a home and work. there was a long-established Italian community in the area. The Cultur e and Society of Red Hook. Given the kinda traditional values of Italian-American society in the middle of the twentieth angiotensin converting enzyme C and the fact that most of the men earned their living from hard corporal labour in the dockyards and elsewhere, it isnot surprising that Red Hook was sooner a raw, masculine and even macho society. Manhood, which involved strength and onslaught (and proving it) was very important. Women were judge to conform to an image of purity and domestic moral excellence and, as Beatrice does, gain most of their satisfaction from cooking and maintaining the household. The men expected to be respected and obeyed as of right and the women had to submit to them in decision- making. The regularise of the Ro spell Catholic Church was strong and most people had traditional moral views.The family and the extended family were of major importance as was the community. Many of the families were new-fangled immigrants from Southern Italy, the ori ginal home of the Mafia, and family and blood ties were often demonstrated with the practice of vendetta, that is the obligation on the rest of the family to take revenge on anyone who insulted or harmed any of its members. It was, therefore, a culture in which a mans reputation (for strength and honesty, for example) was crucial to him and where any affront to a persons comply had to be avenged.This may help you to represent the pressure that Eddie and Marco are under at the end of the play. The Legal Background. In the first 20 years of the Twentieth Century, over three one thousand million Italians emigrated to the U. S. A. to tend from the poverty of their homeland and in the hope of a ruin life in America. These were legal immigrants to America, but the local population grew increasingly hostile to the Italian community.In the early 1920s the American political relation passed laws to restrict immigration and afterwards only four thousand Italians were allowed to get to the U. S. A.legally each year. Far more than this number were desperate to escape the poverty of their own country. Two such were the submarines, Marco and Rodolpho, cousins of Beatrice, who enter America illegitimately on the evening the play opens. One of the few styluss an illegal immigrant could gain the right to remain in America legitimately was to unite an American citizen. This sometimes meant that illegal immigrants married not for love, but exactly to remain in the country. We can perhaps better understand Eddies fears roughly Rodolpho when we cognize this 7. The Carbone Familys Background.A playwright, unlike a novelist, cannot describe characters and situations to an audience. Details about characters and their relationships have to be revealed gradually and subtly. What, then, do we know about the Carbone family and the relationships within it? The Carbones live in an apartment in a tenement building, at 441 Saxon Street, Brooklyn, which Miller describes as a hi strions flat, clean, sparse, homely. Eddie, aged 40, is a large, strong man who enjoys male pursuits and loss bowling with his friends. He is a longshoreman (i. e. he works in the docks). Beatrice is a traditional 1950s housewife.She keeps the flat looking immaculate, cooks and, at least in the early part of the play, dutifully defers to Eddie in everything. She stands up to Eddie much more as the action unfolds, and objects to his over treasureive attitude to Catherine. Catherine, Beatrices dinky 17-year-old niece, had been adopted by Eddie and Beatrice when her parents died. Catherine is very fond of Eddie but there is ripening tension amidst them because of Catherines neediness to start work and Eddies desire to protect her from, as he sees them, the dangers of the adult world. The Eddie Beatrice Catherine Triangle.The relationship between these three is the fOcus of Act I. Eddie and Beatrice have obviously had a warm, lovable relationship but there are currently stresse s. In Catherines opinion, and in Eddies too, Beatrice nags her husband. Catherine tells Rodolpho If I was a wife, I would make a man happy instead of going on at him all the time (Implying that Beatrice does go on at Eddie. ) Eddie certainly agrees with Catherines view. He tells Beatrice You didnt used to jump on me all the time about everything. The last year or two I come in the house I dont know whats gonna shoot me.Its a shooting gallery in here and Im the pigeon. Part of the tension is caused by Eddies belief that he should be the master in the house and Beatrices increasing wish to express her own view. This leads Eddie to say, I dont like the way you talk to me, Beatrice, whenever Beatrice disagrees with him. The Catherine Rodolpho Eddie Triangle. When Eddie first hears that Beatrices cousins have arrived he says it would be an honour to help them, despite the obvious risks involved. He knows how important it is to give the men a chance to work to send money back to Italy .There is no inquiry that Eddie understands the poverty they are escaping as his own fuss had come to the U. S. A. from Italy. Eddies willingness to offer hospitality shows that he is a advanced man, witting of his responsibilities to others in the Italian-American community. This makes his later actions an even greater shock. Eddie is immediately strike by the quiet dignity and maturity of Marco, but he is every bit quickly remonstrated by Rodolpho. This is partly because of Rodolphos personality, for he is an extrovert, quite an loud, showy, lively and fun- loving, but also because of his appearance.Eddies stereotyping of Rodolpho because of his blond hair and his interpreter shows prejudice, which reflects not just Eddies attitudes but those of his time and culture. . The Catherine Rodolpho Eddie Triangle Things which irritate Eddie These are the things about Rodolpho which irritate Eddie His appearance especially his blond dotty hair. Eddie says of Rodolpho hes like a chorus girl or sumpn. His abilities and talents, e. g. dressmaking and cooking, which Eddie recollects are things only a woman should do. This leads him to doubt whether Rodolpho is a real man.His fondness for singing out loud in his high tenor voice, even on the ships. Eddie is embarrassed that other men laugh at Rodolpho for this. He is particularly angry when Rodolpho sings Paper lady because he thinks the words may be related to Catherine and he becomes aware of the growing romance between her and Rodolpho. The stage directions state that Eddie is puffed with overturn when he notices the growing affection between Catherine and Rodolpho. These are the things that annoy Eddie at first, but annoyance becomes hate when he realises that Rodolpho is a rival for Catherine.In Act II, Eddie is furious with Catherine and Rodolpho for going to the cinema and staying out late. Eddie believes that Rodolpho is deliberately date Catherine in the hope of marrying her and being able to stay in America. It is onerous to decide whether this is a genuine concern or whether Eddie is using it as an excuse to cover his real feeling which is sexual jealousy. What do you think? It is unlikely that a man like Eddie would consider Rodolpho as a suitable partner for Catherine, even if there was no sexual jealousy involved. . The Catherine Rodolpho Eddie Triangle Eddies motivesWhatever his motives, be they genuine concern to protect his niece or sexual jealousy, Eddie tries his hardest to turn Catherine against Rodolpho and split them up. He tries to humiliate Rodolpho in front of Catherine in the following ways He cleverly introduces the root word of boxing (a suitably masculine activity for Eddie) and, while pretending to educate Rodolpho how to box, hits him in the mouth. For Eddie, this demonstrates to Catherine what a weak man Rodolpho is and what a strong one he (Eddie) is. It also shows that Eddie thinks women are more attracted to strong, aggressive males.