Justice and the Law Theme Analysis

The fact that the audience’s guide through the events of the play is Alfieri, a lawyer, suggests that issues of law and justice have a central importance in A View from the Bridge. Specifically, many aspects of the play raise the question of whether the law is an adequate or ultimate authority on what is right and wrong. Throughout the play, the law fails to match up with various characters’ ideas of justice. From the beginning, the presence of illegal immigrants questions the justness of strict immigration laws that force Marco and Rodolpho to hide in Eddie’s apartment, after making a perilous journey to America in the hopes of honest work. As Eddie grows suspicious of Rodolpho, he asks Alfieri for help, but Alfieri tells him he has no legal recourse as Rodolpho has done nothing illegal. Eddie is then upset because he feels that Rodolpho’s behavior simply isn’t right, and that he should have some way of getting justice for Catherine and himself. When Eddie finally turns on Rodolpho and Marco, he is behaving legally, and helping the Immigration Bureau enforce the law. But, in doing so, he is also betraying his own family, and in this way not delivering justice. After Marco is put in prison, he wants his own form of justice through revenge, but Alfieri warns him not to violate the law and appeals to a higher form of justice when he tells Marco that he should leave the question of justice to God. For Marco, the law is in conflict with his idea of natural justice, and so he goes on to stab Eddie. If Eddie chooses the law over justice in turning Marco and Rodolpho in, Marco chooses his own form of justice over the law in killing Eddie.

As these examples suggest, the play can be read as displaying the failures of the law to guarantee real justice. Alfieri describes himself as powerless several times, emphasizing his inability as a man of law to stop the tragic events of the play. However, those who try to take action on behalf of their own ideas of justice regardless of the law end up causing themselves and others harm. When he has no legal recourse to separate Rodolpho and Catherine, Eddie turns Rodolpho and Marco in, setting off a chain of events that ostracizes him from his family and neighborhood (and also leads to his own death). And Marco’s attempt to find justice by killing Eddie results in only more pain for his family, with Eddie’s tragic death at the end of the play. The play can thus be seen as rather ambivalent about the relationship between justice and the law: the law does not necessarily cover all issues of right and wrong adequately. Not all that is legal is right, and not all that is illegal is always wrong. But at the same time, the play cautions against taking justice into one’s own hands, which both Marco’s and Eddie’s actions reveal to be a dangerous, not to mention ineffective course of action.