Review of Related Studies

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CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

The deeper understanding of a play arouses people to be more sensitive toward the reality. As each of the experience of a play, make people more aware or careless with the real situation. A View from the Bridge is one of the famous Arthur Miller‘s works. As explained in A Guide to A View from the Bridge. After graduating from university he worked as a journalist and began writing plays but he also worked in the Brooklyn shipyards for two years and met many Italian workers and their families. Miller learnt a lot about the struggles of Italian immigrants when he worked in the shipyards. It was this experience that gave him the idea of writing A View from the Bridge told by a longshoreman. Sean Sheehan and Tony Buzan, 1999: 1 The quotation above means that A View from the Bridge is a play that shows a real situation in which Arthur Miller faces. The story of the play is the story of Italian immigrants‘ life. Related to Nila Krisnawati‘s thesis entitled Eddie’s Personality Changes as the Effect of His Incestuous Love as seen in Arthur Miller ’s A View from the Bridge , she said ―Arthur Miller can prove himself as a talented social playwright through his work in A View from the Bridge ―2006: 22. It is a proved that A View from the Bridge has given a great influence in his work, or it can be said that Arthur Miller is not only great novelist but also great in the playwright. Arthur Miller‘s A View from the Bridge is a kind of classic dramaturgy that has an adequate pattern of tragic hero Greek tragedy. In this drama, Arthur Miller portrays the life of Italian longshoreman named Eddie, as the main character of this play he has a responsibility in controlling and monitoring his society. Hogins in Literature said that ―A View from the Bridge was originally a one act-play written in the genre of n aturalism‖ 1975: 882. It can be said that the characters in this play are more realistic. Miller related the relationships of the neighborhood characters to a rigid code of ethics that influence each of the characters‘ actions and reactions. Arthur Miller states in An Introduction to Literature by Sylvan Barnet, Morton Berman, and William Burto that: If I is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity….It is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them and in them alone, lies the belief – optimistic, if you will – in the perfectibility of man. 1993:652 The quotation above reveals that most of the audience often senses triumph rather than despair in tragedies. The tragedy in the play occasionally related to the death of the main character or the protagonist ones. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, said that ―A View from the Bridge emphasizes one personal being broken a nd destroyed by guilt‖ Williams, 1971:274. The crisis is related to the relationship of a party illegal Italian group-Brooklyn waterfront. Eddie Carbone‘s breakdown and guilt relate to the relationship with his community in Redhook. The breakdown leads to a sin against his community, when he reports the two brothers that lived in his apartment to the Immigration Bureau. As a part of the community he betrays his own group because he cannot keeps and takes care of his community. Another review says, ―Miller decided to make this play because he was interested in the tale of someone who can be driven to make ‗a sacrifice of himself for his conception, however misguided, of right, dignity and justice‘.‖ Sheehan and Buzan, 1999: 2 The above quotation remarks that A View from the Bridge was a play that draws from a longshoreman‘s life that fell into his guilt, as his wrong decision. In this play, Arthur Miller tries to explore further about the audiences‘ reaction toward the play from the beginning to the end. This research serves some elements of the study that differ with the previous study. Most of the previous studies focus only on the extrinsic elements such as the author, the societal and historical perception. This thesis tries to develop the previous study that has been done before; and this research only focuses on the major characters and plot as the intrinsic elements of the play in order to reveal the theme of the play.

B. Review of Related Theories 1. Theory of Characters and Characterization