The play opens in the office of Alfieri, a middle-aged lawyer, in 1950s New York. Alfieri speaks about the Italian-American neighborhood of Red Hook. When he first arrived there from Italy in the 1920s, Alfieri says, Red Hook was dominated by violence and by people taking the law into their own hands. But things have changed since then: “[N]ow we are quite civilized, quite American” (379). Most of the cases he deals with these days are unglamorous, involving mundane domestic issues or work compensation claims. Yet, he says, every few years he encounters a case that bucks that trend, and which has about it the air of something tragic, bloody, and ancient. One such case is that of Eddie Carbone, a 40-year-old longshoreman who works on the docks around the Brooklyn Bridge.

The action shifts to the living room of Eddie Carbone’s apartment, where he lives with his wife, Beatrice, and her 17-year-old niece, Catherine. Eddie comes in from work in the evening and notices that Catherine, who is waiting for him, is “all dressed up” (380), with a new skirt and hairstyle. Eddie expresses concern that the way she is dressed will attract unwanted attention from the neighborhood men.