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In writing the factually inspired play A View From The Bridge,1 Arthur Miller claimed that he wanted to convey a feeling of suspense derived not from plot development, but rather anxious anticipation of the story's inevitable tragic conclusion: "I wanted the audience to feel toward it as I had on hearing it... .For when it was told to me I knew its ending a few minutes after the teller had begun to speak....One knew too well how it would come out, so that the basic feeling would be the desire to stop this man and tell him what he was really doing to his life" (vii). Clearly, this tense play about the downfall of one Eddie Carbone fulfills Miller's stated purpose, but the real source of its suspense is not so easily located. This putatively transparent story of a man's self-destructive desire for his niece creates a more unsettling feeling of apprehension through the subtle yet persistent questioning of the protagonist's sexual orientation. If Eddie, as I suggest, can be viewed as a closeted gay man, then his fear of losing his niece to the charming Rodolpho may well belie a subconscious dread of inadvertently exposing his true nature to his wife, his community, and ultimately himself. Anticipation of what audiences would have considered a shocking revelation may ultimately be what makes the play so relentlessly gripping; it may also help explain why theater audiences were so resistant to the play's initial Broadway run.2
The ambiguity of Eddie's sexuality has been touched on briefly before. Miller himself, in his introduction to the one-act "A View from the Bridge" and "A Memory of Two Mondays," makes a fleeting, undeveloped reference to the play's queer undertone: "There are, after all, an incestuous motif, homosexuality, and, as I shall no doubt soon discover, eleven other neurotic patterns hidden within it" ("On Social Plays" 66). But, perhaps not surprisingly, Miller later insisted that Eddie is primarily driven by feelings of incest: "Eddie Carbone, the hero, must slowly reveal an illicit attachment to his niece, a love which helps to move him toward a betrayal of....[the] illegal Sicilian immigrants" ("On The Theater in Russia" 326). This explicit statement of Eddie's motivation means that Miller's earlier mention of a homosexual neurosis...