"A View from the Bridge" by Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller, the author of "A View from the Bridge" wrote the play in the 1950's after working in a Brooklyn shipyard. He was familiar with the immigrant as both his parents were immigrants to the United States. This may have been the inspiration to write "A View from the Bridge" but nonetheless he had a good knowledge of the immigrant society and therefore makes this book very historically accurate and real. Arthur miller knew what he was writing about and may have based the play on some of his experiences. As I analyzed his biography when he worked on a Brooklyn shipyard in the 1940's he worked with members of the Italian or Sicilian community and so had great and useful knowledge of their way of life. I feel that the success of any play would depend very much on how the audience is affected by what is presented on stage.

Arthur Miller, American playwright

[Portrait of Eddie Davis and Sherry Britton, Leon ...

English: The Brooklyn Bridge, seen from Manhattan,...

How the playwrite brings the themes to the audience is an important factor in the enjoyment of a drama. In this instance I personally feel that the drama "a view from the bridge" is successful on many levels. For starters, in the beginning the introduction does a fantastic dual job at grasping the attention of the audience and providing a background of the scenes that follow. The audience knows from that speech everything about Alfieri and about the community in Red Hook. Justice is very important to the Italians. This brings out a clue as it gives a hint to the audience of what to expect. The community is the 'gullet of New York´, which is 'swallowing the tonnage of the world.´, this sentence is quite ironic since Red Hook is a fishing town and tonnage is another word for cargo. Alfieri speaks as though...