Agenda for Saturday 16th May

09:30 Arrival & Distribution of Resources

09:40 Session 1: A View from the Bridge

Eddie, Catherine & Marco

10:40 Five minute comfort break

10:45 Session 2: A View from the Bridge

Alfieri, Beatrice, Rodolpho

11:10 Session 3: Unseen Poetry

Eddie02. Answer part (a) and part (b)

Part (a)A theatre critic described Eddie as a ‘weak man’. How far do you agree with this view?

and then Part (b)How does Miller present Eddie in the play as a whole?

Task:Is Eddie a weak man? Come up with your own ideas about this. - Where does his strength/weakness come

from?- How/why is his power and status

challenged?

How are you marked on this paper?

•AO1 •Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

•AO2 •Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

  Eddie

ContainedBottled upIn controlPart of community

Out of controlCan’t control his feelingsDesperateScaredOutcast from community

Eddie: across the whole of the play

How to approach part b) Method- method/device Example- evidence Reader Response- what this suggests to the reader and why? Interpretation- is there an alternative interpretation? Could it suggest

anything else? Detail- pick out a key detail(s)/word from quote/example and explain what

this suggests Theme- how does this link to the theme? Purpose- what is Miller trying to show by using this method/quote?

Miller is criticising…Miller is trying to highlight…Miller is trying to raise awareness…

Link- link back to what the actual question is asking

Eddie’s story is ‘timeless’

• What do I mean by this?• As, humans, are we unable to control our

emotions?• What are our flaws and weaknesses?

What are Miller’s intentions through Eddie?

• Eddie is a suitable subject for a modern tragedy because the potential for self-destruction, which is in all of us, in Eddie's case has destroyed him.• Eddie is a very ordinary man, a decent and well-

liked man, and yet the one flaw in his character forces those around him and Alfieri to watch "powerless" (as does the audience) as the case runs "its bloody course". • What Miller does suggest is that we have basic

impulses, which civilisation has seen as harmful to society, and taught us to control. We have self-destructive urges, too, but normally we deny these. Eddie does not really understand his improper desire, and thus is unable to hide it from those around him or from the audience.

How do these themes link to Eddie?

•Immigration, home and belonging•Love and desire•Respect, honour and reputation•Justice and the law•Maturity and independence

Immigration, home and belonging:Miller uses the topic of immigration to make larger points about the idea of home and a sense of belonging. Eddie takes pride in the home he works hard to maintain and is irritated when Rodolpho and Marco intrude on his place as master of his home. Throughout the play he struggles to maintain control over his home as a place where he belongs, but is gradually excluded from it as he drifts awayfrom Catherine and Beatrice. By the end of the play, he hardly belongs in hisown home, or even in his own neighbourhood, as his neighbours shun him forbetraying Marco and Rodolpho.

Love and Desire:Eddie’s intense love for Catherine lead to the central problems of the play.Beyond this, though, A View from the Bridge especially explores the way in which people are driven by desires that don’t fit the mould of normal or traditional forms of familial and romantic love. For one thing, Eddie’s love for Catherine is extreme and hard to define exactly. He is very overprotective, and to some degree is a father figure for her. However, as Beatrice subtly hints several times, his love for Catherine often crosses this line and becomes a kind of incestuous desire for his niece, whom he has raised like a daughter.Eddie is a mess of contradictory, half-repressed desires that are difficult to pindown or define, perhaps even for him. Through this tragically tormented andconflicted character, Miller shows that people are often not aware of theirown desires, and reveals the power that these desires can exert over people.Eddie’s suffocating love for Catherine becomes a desire to possess her. Heeven claims that Rodolpho is stealing from him, as if she were an object heowned. His obsession with Catherine drives him apart from his family andleads him to betray Beatrice’s cousins, thereby effectively ostracizing himselffrom his friends and neighbours. Through the tragic descent of Eddie, A Viewfrom the Bridge can be seen not only as the drama of a family, or of animmigrant community, but also as the internal drama of Eddie’s psyche, as he istormented and brought down by desires he himself doesn’t even fullyunderstand.

Respect, honour and reputation:One of Eddie’s main concerns in the play is his honour and the respect (or lackthereof) he gets from those around him. Eddie works hard tosupport his family and has a proud sense of personal honour. At the beginningof the play, he is a respected, well-liked member of his community. But the playfollows his tragic demise as he loses the respect of others and his goodreputation. He constantly worries about being disrespected or dishonoured byCatherine, Beatrice, Marco, and especially Rodolpho. Closely related to theconcepts of honour or respect is the idea of reputation, which can beunderstood as a more social form of honour. In addition to Eddie’s personalsense of honour, he is greatly concerned with his reputation amongst hisneighbours. He is infuriated when Marco spits on him and accuses him ofturning him in to the Immigration Bureau (even though Eddie really did do it)because these actions are disrespectful and dishonour Eddie, but especiallybecause they occurred in public, in front of the neighbourhood.

Eddie: links to themes While Eddie does lose the respect of others around him, part of the problemwith his obsession with respect and honour is that he has a rather warped ideaof the concepts. Whenever Beatrice or Catherine disagrees with him, heinterprets this as a sign of disrespect. Furthermore, he thinks that Rodolphodisrespects and dishonours him merely by spending time with Catherine. In theend, Eddie loses the respect of his family and community precisely because heis so overly concerned and defensive regarding his own honour and reputation.He interprets all sorts of things as affronts to his personal honour. Then, ironically, this very habit of overreaction causes Catherine, Beatrice, Rodolpho, and Marco to lose actual respect for him gradually. Nonetheless, even after Eddie’s self-destructive decline, Beatrice and Catherine show some respect for him, when he is stabbed by Marco. And Alfieri ends the play by affirming that he still mourns Eddie respectfully, granting Eddie some vestige of a positivereputation after all.

Justice and the law:As Eddie grows suspicious of Rodolpho, he asks Alfieri for help, but Alfieri tells him he has no legal recourse as Rodolpho has done nothing illegal. Eddie is then upset because he feels that Rodolpho’s behaviour simply isn’t right, and that he should have some way of getting justice for Catherine and himself. When Eddie finally turns on Rodolpho and Marco, he is behaving legally, and helping the Immigration Bureau enforce the law. But, in doing so, he is also betraying his own family, and in this way not delivering justice. If Eddie chooses thelaw over justice in turning Marco and Rodolpho in, Marco chooses his ownform of justice over the law in killing Eddie. As these examples suggest, the play can be read as displaying the failures of the law to guarantee real justice. When he has no legal recourse to separate Rodolpho and Catherine, Eddieturns Rodolpho and Marco in, setting off a chain of events that ostracizes himfrom his family and neighbourhood (and also leads to his own death). But at thesame time, the play cautions against taking justice into one’s own hands, whichboth Marco’s and Eddie’s actions reveal to be a dangerous, not to mentionineffective course of action.

Maturity & IndependenceEddie misjudges Catherine’s maturity and continues to see her as a young girl;because of this, he denies her independence. But she is not the only onewhose maturity he misjudges. He underestimates Rodolpho, repeatedlyreferring to him early in the play as “just a kid.” And, given his own childishjealousy and behaviour, Eddie perhaps overestimates his own maturity, as well.Eddie is sad to see Catherine grow up, and tries to hold onto her as shematures and becomes more independent.

What are you going to select as your evidence?•AO1 •Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

•AO2 •Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

AO2: • Use of foreshadowing to show magnitude

of Eddie’s ‘crime’ in phoning the immigration bureau• Violence of Eddie’s language to Marco• Sympathy created by Eddie’s talks with

Alfieri• Marco kills Eddie with his own knife- killed

by his own jealousy and betrayal• Cuts people off, responds to questions

with closed answers• Stage directions• Greek tragedy

Marco

Task:What does Marco mean by this quotation?Which themes does this connect to?How are Marco and Eddie’s ideas about law and justice similar/different?

02. Answer part (a) and part (b)

Part (a)Marco tells Alfieri, “All the law is not in a book.” How does Marco show this in the play?

and then Part (b)How does Miller present Marco in the play as a whole?

How are you marked on this paper?

•AO1 •Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

•AO2 •Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

Marco: across the whole play

How to approach part b) Method- method/device Example- evidence Reader Response- what this suggests to the reader and why? Interpretation- is there an alternative interpretation? Could it suggest

anything else? Detail- pick out a key detail(s)/word from quote/example and explain what

this suggests Theme- how does this link to the theme? Purpose- what is Miller trying to show by using this method/quote?

Miller is criticising…Miller is trying to highlight…Miller is trying to raise awareness…

Link- link back to what the actual question is asking

 Marco

ResponsibleRespectfulStrongSilent

ProudVengefulFurious

Miller creates a character who is a murderer…

• And yet who we see as admirable!

• How?

• Why?

• He follows the same code of honour as Eddie but he does not deviate from it

How do these themes link to Marco?

•Immigration, home and belonging•Love and desire•Respect, honour and reputation•Justice and the law•Maturity and independence

What are you going to select as your evidence?•AO1 •Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

•AO2 •Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

AO1: • Marco’s role as illegal immigrant with family at home in

Italy; • Family ties between him and Beatrice and Eddie • Hard working and loyal to family – sending money home

to feed wife and children• Strong and silent – differences between him and

Rodolpho• Admired by other longshoremen for his strength• Spits in Eddie’s face• Kills Eddie at end.

AO2: • Marco’s language – says little• His actions e.g. lifting the chair ‘like a weapon’; what

others say about him• Kills Eddie with his own knife

Catherine

AO1 • Catherine at start of play – signs of her becoming more

independent such as wanting to get a job, her new clothes;

• however, still signs of childishness in how she behaves towards Eddie;

• her growing maturity as her relationship with Rodolpho develops e.g. disobeying Eddie to stay out late, developing sexual relationship, plans for marriage.

AO2 • Catherine’s language to Eddie at the start of the play

compared to her more independent language at the end of the play;

• the change in her reaction to Eddie – talkative at start of play, becoming much quieter;

• her naiveté at the start of the play in walking round in her slip for example

• but hints of her sexuality in the way she dresses and the phallic symbolism of lighting Eddie’s cigar

Unseen PoetryStructure:Line lengthOrganisation of poemRefrain/repetitionCaesuraEnjambmentRhymeRegular/irregular structureCoupletStanzaFree verseEnd stopped lines

Language:Lexical groupsVerb choiceImageryMetaphor

PersonificationSimilePersonificationDirect addressCollective

pronounPersonal pronounEffect/Reader Response

This demonstrates...This indicates...This shows...This reveals...

Develop interpretationsAlso, this connotes...In addition, this conveys...Furthermore, this might suggest...Moreover, this implies...

BECAUSE

• No alliteration• No onomatopoeia

Part A: themes, ideas & message

Address the question directly:

Explain the themes in the poem:

Explain the purpose of the poem:

Give three focuses you will discuss in Part B with a brief explanation for each:1.

2.

3.

When writing about purposeX is highlighting...X is trying to raise awareness...X is critical of...X is raising a mirror...

Method/device:

Example:

Reader response:

Interpretation:

Detail:

Theme Link:

Purpose:

Link back to actual question:

Suicide in the TrenchesBy Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

1234

5678

9101112

a) How does Sassoon present the realities of war?

b) What methods does he use to achieve this?

Context:Young men were forced to fight in WW1, sometimes against their will. Sometimes the government glamourized fighting in the war, they told the young men they would be heroes and did not tell them about the horrible conditions they would live in.