How does Miller create tension at the end of act 1?

Miller creates tension at the end of Act 1 by exploring the concept of Marco trying to back up his brother against Eddie. Marco suddenly comes after Eddie by saying,’Can you lift this chair?’. Just by saying this Marco is questioning Eddie’s masculinity. Once Eddie has tried this and failed and Marco is able to lift this he is feeling very overjoyed because after all the times Eddie has been emasculating Rodolpho Marco as his brother is backing him up and actually doing the exact same thing to Eddie. Eventually when Marco is grasping the chair above his head the stage directions claim that he has a glare of warning on his face saying to Eddie if you mess with my family again there will be trouble.

How does Miller present Eddie and Alfieri’s contrasting mindsets in this scene?

Alfieri is always trying to look at this topic in a fair objective way. Alfieri: ‘Eddie look, I have my own children. I understand you but the law is very specific.’ Alfieri is trying to look at it in a fair way, the law, however once again in this play Eddie shows selfishness and only thinks about how he can get what he wants and what he wants is Catherine.

 

Miller is making the point here about the illegal immigrants coming into America. Alfieri suggests that he turn the cousins in and then he will get what he wants. Eddie: oh Jesus no I would do nothing about that. Eddie is saying that he would never do anything against his family but Alfieri is saying that he should turn against his family and turn them in and he will get Catherine back.

 

Finally Eddie is trying to make something out of nothing and to find something, anything to get    Rodolpho arrested. Eddie: paper doll they call him. Blondie now. Obviously there is nothing against the law about singing and also about being blonde and Alfieri is reiterating the law and restoring order into Eddie’s mind.

What do we learn about Eddie’s relationship with Beatrice in this scene?

Miller emphasises the fact that Beatrice and Eddie aren’t in a flourishing relationship by using the word again in the sentence, ‘When am I gonna be a wife again Eddie?’ By using the word again Miller is immediately suggesting to us that Eddie and Beatrice used to be in a thriving intimate relationship but that was long ago.

 

Eddie once shows how little he respects Beatrice’s opinion as Miller completely changes the subject and says that Rodolpho is using her. Eddie: B. he’s taking her for a ride. Suddenly saying that Rodolpho is using her when really he is just doing what normal people do and taking her to a movie and there is nothing wrong with that. When maybe Eddie should be doing this to Beatrice and taking her to a movie. 

Also Miller portrays a lack of intimacy between the couple and that Eddie cannot express his feelings and emotions to Beatrice. She tells him to ‘talk but he replies hesitantly that he “can’t talk about it.”  When a man has a problem in a relationship they should be able to their family for one and also they should definitely be able to talk to their wife. 

 

 

What tensions does Miller portray during the arrival of the Italian cousins

Miller portrays tension in quite a few different moments during this part of the play.

Firstly, when Rodolpho starts going on about how he wants to go back to Italy and buy a motorcycle, Miller immediately has Eddie question the fact that this is very ambitious and quite frankly a stupid comment from Rodolpho. 

After Rodolpho starts to sing Miller seizes his chance to have Eddie emasculate Rodolpho because he is singing like a women. Eddie says he cannot sing anymore and says it is because of the immigration office but really it is because he does not want Catherine to be impressed. 

The singing also causes tension between Catherine and Eddie because Eddie is making him stop but Catherine is saying that it is wonderful and she wants to let him finish which is ironic because that is the complete opposite of what Eddie wanted to happen as a result of him stopping the singing. 

There is another bit of big tension when Beatrice asks how long they are going to stay. Marco starts his response and then Eddie cuts in and immediately makes it clear that he doesn’t really want them in this house for long and would want if they stayed for a long time for them to move to a house of their own.

So in conclusion I think that Miller portrays a lot of tensions in this part of the play and it is always Eddie who is involved with these tense moments.

 

What do we learn about the word where the play is set from the opening speech

This play we are reading here is set in Red Hook which is an area next to the Brooklyn Bridge. This area is extremely poor and quite far away from the more richer parts of New York. This is a part of New York where most longshoreman work so it is dominated by them but one man that isn’t a longshoremen is our narrator Alfieri who is a lawyer. However as important a job as that sounds it wasn’t that big a job in Red Hook  and he wasn’t a very popular man, because there was quite a lot of crime in Red Hook he was the man that could send them to jail for it and they were very aware of that.

 

Red Hook was also one of the main places for transporting illegal immigrants into America. So you get quite a lot of foreigners living in Red Hook because its the place where all the immigrants go to live unless they have relatives which is the case in this play.

 

We learn lots about the place and community of Red Hook in this opening speech by Alfieri. We learn that this place (red hook) is thought of as an absolute slum by all the people both living in it and not living in it. First of all if you didn’t live on the street then you lived in these blocks of flats that would probably have one room and would not be nice at all.

They are not electronically advance as they only have a record player and their houses are extremely basic(portable phonograph).

 

However Miller says that actually there world has got better and they have become more like the American civilisation now and they have grown by almost half. This just shows to us how bad it must have used to been in red hook because it has got much better and it is still now after all that improvement considered a slum.

 

Their world mainly though seems to me to be extremely ruthless and barbaric. For instance when Frankie Yale got cut precisely in half with a machine gun that is a very ruthless act and there is one word that is obviously very important in Red Hook and that is justice. There are lots of dodgy people and they have morals and very few of them can be changed of their morals. So if you disagree with them that is just tough.

So overall I think that the world of Red Hook is very ruthless and Barbaric and just generally not a very nice place to live.

4th form

non fiction analysis on ‘The Nation under a Shroud’

The nation under a shrew is a formal piece of writing and we can tell this because it is full of facts and informative writing. The use of these statistical facts is used for example from ‘the US has started using B-2 stealth bombers’ this is telling us what is being said. There are no personal pronouns used which makes this a very impersonal piece of writing. This is also very formal because of the vocabulary that is used for example ‘conflagration’ which means a destructive fire that could threaten life on earth. So to conclude this writing is a formal piece and impersonal and very factual.

5 things to improve my writing and 5 most important things

Things to help my writing:

1: Read more to get a better vocab

2: Vary sentence length for effect

3:Personalise writing with anecdotes

4:Use analytical verbs and phrases

5: Use what who and how in my writing

5 most important things:

1: Reading lots of different things

2: expand noun phrases to add interest

3: Be able to shift between formal and informal language

4: Use punctuation naturally and regularly

5: Be able to analyse a text using analytical phrases

Rafa Benitez and his time at Chelsea from my view

Rafa Benitez came to the club at a very difficult time for the club. I knew straight away that this would be a very tough time for him and that is for two reasons, first he was a very successful manger under Liverpool who are a rival of Chelsea’s and secondly the fans all loved Di Matteo and he came in for him so there was always going to be difficulties for Rafa. However I do not think that he has done that bad a job for Chelsea because he has achieved Chelsea’s main goal for the season which is to qualify for the Champions league and also on top of that he has won a major trophy with them. I think also he has done a good job to make the fans accept him because of the results he has been getting for the team. I think that if the fans did not dislike him so much he would have a future at chelsea

Formal Vs Informal language and Opinion Vs Fact

I  will start by analysing text ‘e’. I think that this has been written in a formal language and I have gathered this thought from the fact that words have been used such as ‘advocate’ and ‘voluptuous’   which gives the text a much more formal feel. There are not any personal pronouns which makes it more impersonal. I also gather that this text is fact because once again there are not any personal pronouns which makes us know that this is not his own opinion and having no personal pronouns makes us feel that this is a more actual text.

Secondly I will look at text ‘k’. There is a colloquial tone being used which comes across very chatty and makes the piece feel very informal. There are also impersonal pronouns which introduce an informal piece of text again.