Deconstructing Alfieri’s Speech Anonymous 12th Grade

The play “A View from the Bridge” begins with a speech from Alfieri, a lawyer. Alfieri offers the audience the titular “view from the bridge” and acts as the greek chorus in a tragedy. The speech serves as an introduction to the play, introducing the characters and setting the scene. It has three main themes: heritage, law and justice, and the condition of the working class. Alfieri’s speech also foreshadows certain aspects of the later plot.

The first theme to appear in the speech is law and justice. In the first few sentences, Alfieri tells us that he is a lawyer and that people avoid him because of it. He explains that he and other lawyers are “only thought of in connection with disasters”. He also mentions the lives and gangs of crime, which once ravaged the streets, romanticizing it in the lines “Al Capone, the greatest Carthigian of all, was learning his trade” of crime and violence. Later, Alfieri explicitly emphasizes the importance of justice with the phrase “many here … were justly shot by unjust men”, which reveals that justice can be carried out by anyone, even due to ulterior motives. Alfieri informs the audience that “justice is very important here”, and uses his speech to hint at the rotten kernel at the heart of...