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Most of the time we settle for half and I like it better. Even as I know how wrong he was, and his death useless, I tremble, for I confess that something perversely pure calls to me from his memory—not purely good, but himself purely And yet, it is better to settle for half, it must be! And so I mourn him—I admit it—with a certain alarm.

This quote deals with the central conflict of A View from the Bridge: the self's will versus the will of the community. The whole man that Alfieri describes in Eddie is the self-interested man. Eddie's actions within the play are completely motivated by his own desires at the expense of others. Thus, humans must act halfway to preserve the rules of the community and lives of others. The idea that Alfieri suggests, that Eddie acted as a whole person, unrestrained and uninhibited, is true. However, Eddie's wholeness was at the expense of his own family and eventually himself. He only escaped restraint because he escaped consideration of other people or the community at large. Eddie's wholeness is a whole interest in his own life. His tragic flaw is this self-interest—a flaw that seems both admirable and alarming to Alfieri.

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