Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge: A Study of Social Conflicts

Abstract

Arthur Asher Miller, a representative modern American playwright, used the drama as another man uses a newspaper, a pulpit or a platform for expressing his views on contemporary social life. Miller’s plays are always concerned with larger issues like man’s ultimate status in society and a search for stable human relationship. In A View from the Bridge Miller has depicted the social conflicts and barrenness of Eddie Carbone, the middle aged protagonist. The central conflict in this play is between social and psychological obligations. An excess love for his niece makes Eddie to violate the law of his own communal ethics. He suffers from tragic consequences when he violates the social code. Although Eddie understands and accepts the ethics of his society, he violates them. He betrays the social code by which he lives and for which he dies in an attempt to regain his ‘good name’. The playwright depicts the tension and conflicts within a family and then broadens his theme and mixes it with larger issues of the society to get a universal sanction.