Product Description

• Fully revised editions of our best-selling literature series
• New full colour design and illustration
• Full text commentary and progress check quizzes
• Character summaries and icon links
• Sample essay questions and mind maps
• Graded sample answers
• Mind maps
• Cartoon-strip style plot summaries
• Only 4 colour literature guide available
• Most up-to-date text for KS3 and GCSE specifications
• New features designed to guide student’s reading of text for optimum exam success

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4771 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
Powerful, passionate and frighteningly relevant, the drama of Arthur Miller deals in the hard currency of 'social' realism and tragedy. "All My Sons" (1947), which brought Miller his first major success, is a merciless exposure of wartime profiteering and the capitalist ethic. The ideological conflict of father and son is a compelling one, and points to the way Miller develops his later drama, where social issues are tempered and tautened by the theme of personal disintegration. Eddie, the hero of "A View from the Bridge" (1955), is an illiterate longshoreman. His inexorable progress towards self-discovery and fall stirs the emotions with the same painful intensity as the play jolts the intellect.

Customer Reviews

two very great plays
This is a convenient way to get two of the greatest plays of the twentieth century. My preference (and it will be that of most people, I think) is for 'A View from the Bridge', originally written in verse to echo the style of a Greek tragedy, and that is really what it is, with the downfall of Eddie Carbone and the catastrophe that surrounds it inevitable, as lawyer Alfieri, whom Miller uses as a kind of observer/narrator, is aware almost from the word go. It is an extraordinarily powerful play, made the more compelling, as always with Miller, by the vigour and rhythms of the longshoreman's language, so unlike that of the Salem villagers in 'The Crucible' or poor Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman' but just as convincing and just as powerful. 'All my Sons' has never moved me quite as much, but it is nonetheless a beautifully contructed play with, again, real tragedy at its heart, and again it is the tragedy of a 'little man' getting things terribly wrong under pressure - haven't we all, though I hope not with comparable results. It seems to me that compassion lies at the heart of both plays, and maybe that is what, in the end, makes them so moving, though Miller's extraordinary technical control is a big factor in realising that too. Anyway, they are wonderful, and this book is worth many times its modest cover price.

A Gripping Play
Last year i was told that we would be studying Arthur Miller's 'A View From The Bridge' for GCSE. We went to see this play and i immeadatliy fell in love with it. the story was so gripping and kept you hooked all the way. We used this copy of the play to study from in and out of school and i found it very detailed and helpful. This is deffinatly some of Arthur Miller's best work.

A play that will leave you reeling through to its end
For a play that has been set for my GCSE english lit. i found "A View from the Bridge" to be one of the most dramatic and captivating pieces of literature that i have ever encountered.

The play truly immersed me into the world of Italian immigrants in Brooklyn, i got a taste of their culture, language and firm beliefs. Their firm belief of the "social code" is the main theme that dominates the play and through the main character Eddie Carbone we learn of just how important and ingrained that belief is across the close knit Italian community. Aside from this theme, Miller deals with another issue that plays just as an important part of the plot as the "social code" and that is the unhealthy relationship between Eddie and his neice Catherine. As the play progresses we learn of the true nature of Eddie's relationship with Catherine.

Arthur Miller has a real knack of creating this underlying tension that rides through the play to it's intense finale. In most instances Miller locates much of the tension within the actions of his characters rather than their dialogue,especially in regard to Eddie and his feelings towards Catherine.

I found this play refreshing as it was different to anything that i had ever read and to those that yearn for a change i highly recommend "A View from the Bridge" in all it's tense, dark and quite often humourous ways.