As part of our FREE character profiles for 12 key GCSE texts. We want to help you revise and learn GCSE English and GCSE English Literature to your full potential.

We have listed profiles of the key characters from A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller below. We hope the information provided helps you with your GCSE English Literature.

Eddie Carbone – Eddie Carbone is a docker. He lives with his wife, Beatrice and orphaned niece, Catherine. Eddie is unable to express himself very well. His lust for Catherine leads to his undoing.

Catherine – Catherine is Eddie and Beatrice Carbone’s niece. Catherine is intelligent, pretty, popular and Italian. Catherine wants her uncle to be happy with her despairs when Eddie does not like Rodolpho- the man she hopes to marry.

Beatrice – Beatrice is Eddie Carbone’s wife and is Catherine’s aunt. Beatrice is a kind woman, having raised Catherine from a young age she is like a mother figure to her.

Marco – Marco is Beatrice’s cousin. Marco is a hard working character who came from Italy to America to make money to send home to his family.

Rodolpho – Rodolpho is Beatrice’s Italian cousin. Rodolpho prefers singing to working on the docks. To the other men Rodolpho is not very masculine because he loves to sing, dance, cook and sew. Rodolpho wishes he was an American and seeks his fame and fortune in America.

Mr. Lipari – Mr Lipari is the butcher who above the Carbone’s. Eddie tries to blame Mr. Lipari for tipping off the Immigration office about Marco and Rodolpho.

Mrs. Lipari – Mrs Lipari is Mr Lipari’s wife who lives above the Carbone’s. Mrs. Lipari gives Marco and Rodolpho a room in her home when Eddie forces them to leave his house.

Two “Submarines” - Two Submarines are the illegal immigrants who are hiding upstairs in the Lipari house.

Alfieri – Alfieri is an Italian-American lawyer. Alfieri narrates the play. His aim is to vocalise the moral and social implications in the play.

Mike – Mike is a docker and friends with Eddie and Louis.

Louis – Louis is a docker and friends with Eddie and Mike.

Tony – Tony is a friend of the Carbone family. He assures that Marco and Rodolpho get off the ship safely and takes them home.

Be sure check out our A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller GCSE English Literature learning song

This article taken from Teachkit focuses on giving you an introduction to A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller.

A short history of A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller

A View from the Bridge has an unusually complicated performance history. It was originally a screenplay called The Hook, written by Miller with assistance from Elia Kazan, who had previously directed the playwright’s All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. The script, dealing as it then did with “waterfront corruption and graft” was eventually withdrawn by Miller in response to the Hollywood studio’s complaints that it was un-American (this was, of course, the age of McCarthy – the early 1950s). The Hook’s basic themes would nonetheless resurface in Kazan’s 1954 film, On the Waterfront.

Inspired now by the true story of a Brooklyn dockworker who informed on two illegal immigrants, Miller reconceived The Hook as A View from the Bridge. The play, a one-act verse drama, was a mild failure on Broadway in 1955; critics found its austere style uninvolving. Miller had wanted to create a play that would simply tell the tale he himself has heard, with no attempt to gain audience sympathy for Eddie’s – or anyone else’s – plight. Consequently, nothing was allowed onstage that did not directly contribute to the action. But Miller ultimately found that he had created a cold play, rather than a fascinating and suspenseful one.

In 1956, A View from the Bridge was revised for a new London production. The verse became prose, the length was expanded to two acts, and the characters were allowed to speak more – thus becoming more human and more sympathetic. While we may not identify with the Eddie Carbone of the final version, we are better able to understand what motivates him and therefore to sympathize with his basic dilemma: how to “let go” of the niece he has raised and loved as a daughter. As Miller writes in his introduction to the published revision,

“Eddie Carbone is still not a man to weep over…But it is more possible now to relate his actions to our own and thus to understand ourselves a little better, not only as isolated psychological entities, but as we connect to our fellows and our long past together.”

We hope this article helps with your GCSE English Literature revision. Be sure to check out the LearnThruMusic learning song “Think of Yourself” A View from the Bridge

Texts we will be covering include:

1.    Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
2.    An Inspector Calls by JB Priestly
3.    To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4.    A view From the Bridge by Arthur Miller
5.    Blood Brothers by Willy Russell
6.    The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
7.    Othello by William Shakespeare
8.    Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
9.    Macbeth by William Shakespeare
10.  Lord of the Flies by William Golding
11.  Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austin
12.  Stone Cold by Robert Swindells