Analysis of 'A View From The Bridge' Monologue

'A View From The Bridge' is a play written by the great Arthur Miller. It's a story revolving around the Carbone family: Eddie Carbone; his wife Beatrice; their adopted niece Catherine. The family lawyer Alfieri is the peacemaker and narrator of the play and like most dramatic theater, he kicks off the play with a dramatic monologue (known as a prologue if it's at the beginning)

'My wife has warned me, so have my friends; they tell me the people in this neighbourhood lack elegance, glamour. After all, who have I dealt with in my life? Longshoremen and their wives, and fathers and grandfathers, compensation cases, evictions, family squabbles – the petty troubles of the poor – and yet . . . every few years there is still a case, and as the parties tell me what the trouble is, the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea, the dust in this air is blown away and the thought comes that in some Caesar’s year, in Calabria perhaps or on the cliff at Syracuse, another lawyer, quite differently dressed, heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course.' - extract from Alfieri's monologue.

I think Arthur Miller wanted to portray Alfieri as a character whose life is quite repetitive and boring now, 'who have i dealt with in my life?' - suggesting no real importance in what he does now. In addition to this, Miller uses polysyndetic listing. The technique is usually used to express repetitiveness, boredom, a sense of never-ending. Using it here, I believe, shows exactly how Alfieri's life is ultimately boring and never-changing, but also makes the 'and yet...' stand out even more as it's a signal that he is about to contradict everything he started off saying. 

On the contrast, the next set of asyndetic listing brings forth a different aspect of Alfieri's life. The change of lexical field implements a new time-frame in Alfieri's life. The switch from 'compensation', 'evictions', 'squabbles', 'troubles', to 'green scent of the seas', 'cliffs of Syracuse', to me, implies he was talking of a time once lost. A past but not a forgotten past. Miller used the technique of imagery to combine with the asyndetic listing to show Alfieri is, to an extent, reminiscing of a past time - probably more enjoyable past.