Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The Rooftop as Retreat from the World
Whenever Terry Malloy feels pressure from the outside
world, he retreats to the rooftop of the tenement. The rooftop is
so far away from the docks that he can pretend it’s another world.
On the rooftop, Terry can be a dreamer. He’s closer to the clouds,
and he has a view of the city—and seeing the city from afar places
him somehow outside it and above it. Terry’s goal is, in a sense,
to stay up on the roof—that is, to be at all times the person he
is when he’s there. Joey Doyle spent time on the roof, too, raising
pigeons, and he made a similar decision to testify to the commission.
The rooftop serves as a place where characters can go to scrutinize
their own morals and choices without the pressures of the world
below.
Crucifixion Dialogue
Father Barry often compares the deaths of innocent longshoremen and
crucifixions, thus making their martyrdom explicit. Father Barry
orders the longshoremen (as well as the viewer) to account for actions
and non-actions, such as silence, that he considers sins. Joey Doyle
and Dugan both died for the sins of the longshoremen, and religious
imagery accompanies these deaths. Edie cradles Joey’s corpse like
Mary cradled Jesus’ body, Father Barry rises out of the cargo hold
with Dugan’s body as if ascending to heaven, and Charlie’s corpse
hangs by a hook, all of which are visual references to Christ’s
body on the cross.
“D & D”: Deaf and Dumb
The longshoremen try to portray their silence as part
of a code, but the film suggests that it’s merely mob-approved cowardice.
“D & D” runs throughout the dialogue, and the phrase is so familiar
that men on all sides use it. Dugan the longshoreman and Johnny Friendly
the union chief each refer to the phrase naturally. The words in
the phrase suggest a kind of slavery. Those who are deaf and dumb
have no articulate voice, and they are allowed to channel everything
they see and feel only into work. Those who are deaf and dumb become
work machines without identities. Part of Terry’s transformation
in the film involves shaking up the accepted pattern of abiding
by the code and thinking for himself, thereby forging an identity.
He thinks, therefore he is.
