Genre
Drama
Language
English
Setting and Context
Red Hook, Brooklyn; 1950s
Narrator and Point of View
Alfieri occasionally speaks directly the audience in first-person, but the rest of the play is simply third-person limited, as are most plays.
Tone and Mood
The tone is even, fair, and straightforward. The mood is tense, simmering, wrought, and brooding.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Protagonist: Eddie Antagonist: Rodolpho However, this opposition is complex, since Eddie is in some sense his own antagonist, and Rodolpho is presented sympathetically.
Major Conflict
Whether Eddie will realize that his feelings for Catherine are inappropriate and let her go and marry Rodolpho.
Climax
When Eddie, in an explosive, drunken rage, kisses both Catherine and Rodolpho.
Foreshadowing
-When Marco triumphantly lifts the chair above his head and stares challengingly at Eddie, it foreshadows his spitting/denunciation/murdering of Eddie at the end (p. 46).
-Eddie's recounting of the story of Vinny Bolzano foreshadows his own fate.
Understatement
-"No. But I got other worries" (p. 24), Beatrice, alluding to the disaster of her marriage.
Allusions
-Al Capone, the early 20th-century gangster, was a famous Italian-American
-Rome, Julius Caesar
-"Paper Doll", a famous Tinpan Alley song from 1943
Imagery
see other entry
Paradox
n/a
Parallelism
n/a
Personification
-"This is the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world" (p. 2)
-"...the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks were beaten" (p. 2)
Use of Dramatic Devices
-Alfieri acts as a chorus
-Alfieri occasionally gives short soliloquies
-Pathos in the character of Eddie
-There are many stage directions that Miller provides to show the tensions between characters
-Eddie is a tragic hero with a tragic flaw
