‘Eddie is solely
responsible for his own downfall.’ To what extent do you agree with this
statement?
To a
certain extent, it seems clear that Eddie is responsible for his own downfall. This
seems to be partly the case because of his pseudo-incestuous love for Catherine
and the unacceptable sexual desire that he feels for her which is evident throughout
the play. This desire and over-protectiveness is clearly displayed when he
‘sizes up Rodolpho’ with a ‘concealed suspicion’ when Catherine shows any
interest in him. In addition, Eddie’s refusal to let her wear her high heels,
clearly a symbol of her budding womanhood and sexuality, and his cruel mockery
of her in front of the man she is trying to impress when he calls her ‘Garbo’
further mark Eddie out as a character undeserving of our sympathy.
Furthermore,
we feel that Eddie is to be blamed for his own downfall, as we are aware of the
many warnings that Alfieri has given him over the course of the play. Alfieri
advises him to ‘let go’ of Catherine, even explicitly telling him that ‘there’s
too much love and it goes where it mustn’t’, all of which Eddie ignored. Even
when Alfieri warns him that ‘[he] won’t have a friend in the world’ if he
betrays Rodolpho and Marco due to the strict code of Sicilian honour upheld
within the Red Hook community, Eddie refuses to heed Alfieri’s advice and
eventually ‘snitches’ on the two submarines to the Immigration Bureau.
Worse
still, once the two Italians have been arrested, Eddie refuses to admit that he
has acted immorally and is unjustifiably outraged when Marco (correctly)
accuses him of betrayal and of murdering his children. Eddie’s obstinate desire
to have his ‘name’ cleared and his refusal to admit his mistakes or make amends
by attending Catherine’s wedding portrays him as stubbornly brutish and
vindictive character and as such the audience may well find themselves
sympathizing with Catherine when she calls him ‘a rat’ who bites people when
they sleep. Treachery is one of the most despised crimes at any time (Dante,
for example places Judas in the lowest levels of Hell for his betrayal of
Jesus) but the repugnance that the audience feels towards Eddie’s actions is
intensified by the fact that the principal victim seems to be Marco who has
been nothing but respectful towards Eddie as he works hard to provide for his
family who are clearly suffering in Italy as they are forced to ‘eat the
sunshine’ for lack of food. The disgust that we feel towards Eddie perhaps
however reaches its climax in the fight scene at the end of the play when
instead of fighting fairly with Marco he draws a knife on the unarmed Italian.
Seen in this light, there is a clear sense of justice in Eddie’s death and we
can see in a very literal sense that Eddie, stabbed by his own weapon, is in a large
part responsible for his own downfall.
Nonetheless,
although Eddie is clearly responsible to some degree for his death at the end
of the play, Miller does at points evoke sympathy for Eddie as the audience is
continuously exposed to the inner conflicts he faces which suggests he may not
be entirely responsible for the fate which befell him. Firstly, through
Beatrice, we realize that Eddie is not to be held solely responsible for his lustful
desires for Catherine as she too plays a part, ‘walking around in [her] slip’
even though she is a grown woman. In addition, we are also exposed to the
possibility that Catherine could have also had feelings for Eddie as she says
‘I mean I know him’ and that she ‘can feel a block away when he’s blue in his
mind and just wants somebody quiet and nice’ to talk to, two statements which
clearly suggest that her feelings for Eddie were going beyond the purely daughterly.
In
addition, it is not so easy to condemn Eddie’s feelings for Catherine as he
does, at points, behave in a genuinely caring manner, for example when he
initially refuses to let her take up the job as a secretary at the start of the
play, calming that he ‘knows the neighbourhood’ where she will be working and
it is not a respectable one and that he had envisaged a better future for
Catherine where she would work in some ‘nice office in one of them nice
buildings in New York’.
Furthermore
through Alfieri, we also see that Eddie truly believes that Rodolpho is taking
Catherine ‘for a ride’ and that he is only ‘bowin’ to her passport’. Eddie’s
repetition of ‘I know what’s on his mind’ emphasises the fact that he believes
that Rodolpho is manipulating Catherine. Moreover, we are exposed to the fact
that Eddie does not seem to realize his feelings for Catherine and so we can
see that, although his perception of the world might be skewed, Eddie’s motives
for acting are sound which makes it difficult to judge him too harshly for his
behaviour towards Rodolpho.
The sense
that Eddie is not fully to blame for his actions is accentuated by Miller’s use
of the conventions found within Greek tragedy to convey a sense that Eddie’s
demise is inevitable. There is a tragic sense of inevitability and irony from
the very beginning of the play when Alfieri narrates the story in past tense,
introducing Eddie as a character who ‘was’ Eddie Carbone. In addition, the
notion that destiny has to ‘run its bloody course’ also creates a sense of
inevitability within the play which suggests that, if Eddie is simply following
a path already marked out for him by the Fates then it is not truly fair to
judge him as being responsible for the route that path takes. This theme of
inevitability is constantly revisited throughout the play portraying Eddie as a
man at the mercy of greater forces. We are aware of his allegiance to the
Sicilian code of honour, which views betrayal as of the worst of sins. At the
beginning of the play Miller establishes Eddie as a character so vehemently
against betrayal and ‘stool pigeons’ like Vinny Balzano and Frankie Yale to
convey the drastic change that he has gone through, showing the strength of the
forces that are tearing him apart. It is the tension between these forces,
which include his sexual desires, his attempts to be a good father, his jealously,
anger and the importance of his ‘name’, that ultimately lead to his death.
Therefore, in conclusion it seems that, despite initial impressions, Eddie
Carbone was fundamentally not to blame for his downfall but was instead in many
ways a tragic protagonist whose downfall was inevitable from the start, a man who
was ‘drown[ed] by a river’ of powerful forces because he ‘buck[ed] it’.