Character essay writing (eddie)

In the play, Eddie is presented as a tragic hero with a fatal flaw, in this case, his passionate desires for his niece, Catherine. So far through out the play Eddie has had a constant subconscious conflict with himself. One half is telling him to go toward the sexual desires and the other is to listen to the societal expectations. But in the end no matter which path he chooses, he will end up in the same conclusion, which is death (as this is a Greek tragedy).

Eddie believed that the man should be the leader of the household and that everything goes by him first concerning his family and that he should be very manly and stands up for those close to him. You can see that he believes this by the way he talks to Catherine. Catherine is talking to him about her job as a stenographer and he says ''why didn't you ask me before you took a job?'' this shows that he wants Catherine to ask for his permission before accepting the job. He wants her to ask for permission so he feels like he is the boss and because he wasn't consulted first he feels threatened. This is one thing that leads to his downfall because he was trying to be so manly he could not show any emotions, so he kept everything inside and bottled it up.

He shows his manliness when he starts to be competitive with Marco and Rodolfo for instance when he starts to teach him Boxing ''well come on , I'll teach you'' and then when
Marco showed Eddie that he could pick up a chair with one hand, Eddie looked grumpy because he couldn't do it, he felt like he was beaten.
His notions of manhood also lead to his downfall because he was so self indulgent that he could not take Alfieri's advice to let
Catherine do what she wanted to do.

Eddie's sense of justice and fairness seemed to motivate him a lot. At the beginning his sense of justice and fairness motivated him in a good way for instance he thought he had to let Marco and Rodolfo stay because it was the right thing to do ''then what the hell. It's an honour' B., I mean it. I was just thinkin' before, comin' home, suppose my father did not come to this country , and I was starvin' like them over there. and I had people in America who could keep me a couple of months? The man would be honoured to lend me a place to sleep''. This shows his fairness but towards the end his sense justice and fairness seemed to get worse.
''give me the number of the Immigration Bureau .Thanks I want to report something. Illegal Immigrants .Two of them. That's right.
Four-forty-one Saxon Street Brooklyn, yeah. Ground floor. Heh? I'm just around the neighbourhood , that's all. Heh?'' Eddie did this because he thought this was the best thing to do for everyone concerned but he was wrong because as a result of this Eddie ended up dead as he is the tragic hero.

I think his secret desire for Catherine motivates him a great deal in a way that he is so protective of her that he does not want her going out or wearing revealing clothes this is shown when he says "I think it's too short" and he didn't like the way she walked "now don't aggravate me Katie you are walkin wavy" he probably didn't like the way she walked because it probably got attention from men and Eddie didn't like that because in a way he thought Catherine was his. He also says "you ain't all the girls" this is Eddie saying you are not all the girls your my girl. He doesn't like the way she walks and dresses and that she is getting a job because all these things show that she is becoming a woman and Eddie doesn't like this, so he is motivated to protect her as much as possible. He was so strict with her as she was growing up, as soon as she saw a boy (Rodolfo) she literally jumped at him. Eddie's secret desire for Catherine is also incorporated in his self interest because all he could think about was himself and he didn't look at how happy Catherine was with Rodolfo, all he cared about was trying to break them up and he tried to do this by phoning the Immigration Bureau but all this caused was Catherine and himself to grow apart and for Catherine to finally see what type of man he was.

Finally, also jealousy motivates Eddie to doing outrageous and terrible things because he was jealous of Rodolfo and Catherine's relationship. For instance when he kissed Catherine and Rodolfo "he kisses her on the mouth" and "and suddenly kisses him" I think he does this because he is jealous of what they have together, because of this
Eddie thinks that Rodolfo is gay. Eddie thinks if he kisses Rodolfo,
Catherine might realise that he is gay. Eddie is jealous because he knows he can not have her so he try's to make sure no one else can but he does not succeed he just drives her away from him.