How Does Miller Make This Such a Dramatic and Significant Conclusion to Act 1?

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The end of Act 1 ends with the audience seeing a lot of tension between Rodolfo and Eddie which as a result spears to turn into a fight between the two men. Eddie invites Rodolfo to come to the “bouts” to see a fight. Eddie who pretends he is shocked that Rodolfo has never seen a fight or even been in a fight before begins to teach Rodolfo how to box. However, Eddie cunningly disguises his teaching of self-defence as his first chance to get one over Rodolfo and prove his dominance in strength. Rodolfo very cleverly picked his timing as when the fight broke out Catherine was away from the scene making coffee and Beatrice who was in the room only saw the boxing as a play fight. This allowed Eddie to make it very clear to Rodolfo that he did not want him to be with Catherine any longer but, Eddie did not express his views with speech. Eddie used brute force and fists to embed his views in Rodolfo. Once again this was very clever as using strength is one of the only ways that he can take the higher ground on Rodolfo. Eddie is extremely patronising when he speaks to Rodolfo however Rodolfo doesn’t appear to have the courage to through a decent punch at Eddie. This is until Eddie invites Rodolfo to put a bit more into it when he says “Come on, kid, put sump’d behind it” which leads to the once cautious man to jab at Eddies jaw and graze it. This perfectly sets up Eddie who now has a reasonable explanation to punch Rodolfo. This he does “staggering” Rodolfo who is quick to pull out the fight and begin dancing to Paper Doll with Catherine. This sequence of events also informs Rodolfo of what Eddie is capable of doing if his affections for Catherine still take the better of him. This also sparks a series of events in Act 2 with both physical and verbal tension increases as shown when the masculinity of Rodolfo was question prior to the fight. Catherine’s return to the stage

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