Category: All My Sons

The Playwright:

Arthur Miller was born in 1915, grew up in middle-class Jewish parents in New York City. He studied at the University of Michigan. He wrote 17 plays, and wrote a series of unsuccessful plays for theater and radio, it was not until the opening of All My Sons in 1947 that Miller won a Tony Award for Best Authored Play.Some of his works are: The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons. He died in 2005.

Characters:

Keller Family

• Joe: a father of two sons. He is a wealthy owner of airplane parts company.
• Kate: Joe’s wife, a woman of uncontrolled inspirations and an overwhelming capacity for love.
• Larry: Joe and Kate’s son, An elder son of Joe. He fought as a pilot in the Second World War and was reported missing. (unseen character in the play).
• Chris: Larry’s brother, he is in love with Ann Deever, the former girlfriend of his brother Larry.

Deever Family

• Steve Deever: Joe’s ex-partner, father to Ann and George, who is sent to prison for the shipping of faulty parts. (unseen character in the play).
• George: Steve’s son, a lawyer and a childhood friend of Chris.
• Ann: George’s sister, previously engaged to Larry, now engaged to Chris.

Neighbors

• Dr. Jim and Sue Bayliss: Keller’s neighbors. Jim is a successful doctor. He wants to become a medical researcher. His wife Sue is a friend of the Keller family too.
• Frank and Lydia Lubey: a childhood friends of the Keller boys, parents of three children.
• Bert: a neighborhood child and frequent visitor, he is friends with the Bayliss’ son.

Short summary:

All My Sons is a play set during the second world war, in August 1947, in the mid-west of the U.S.A. It is about a successful businessman, Joe Keller, self-made man who has done a terrible thing. He framed his business partner for a crime. He owned a manufacturing plant with Steve Deever. One morning, a shipment of damaged parts came in, Joe and his business partner Steve were arrested for shipping faulty aircraft parts which caused 21 aircrafts to crash, killing the pilots. Keller claimed that the damaged parts went out without his knowledge! and that his partner was the one who had covered it up. Keller went home free, while Steve remained in jail. It is ironic that

The ones who suffer from Joe’s selfish actions are those who are risking their lives to help others.

Joe Keller was living peacefully with his wife Kate and his son Chris, but had another son Larry who missed in the war. Kate refused to believe that Larry is dead, believing that if he is, then Joe would be responsible for the death of the twenty-one pilots. She hoped that Larry has survived and will return home.

Chris -younger son of Keller family- was in love with Ann Deever-Steve’s daughter and Larry’s old girlfriend -. They decided to marry, but Kate refused that , she thought that if Chris and Ann get married, it means Larry is dead! As a consequence, if Larry is dead, then it means that Joe killed him by shipping out those damaged parts.

Ann’s brother George arrived to stop the wedding. He had gone to visit his father in jail , then he left newly convinced that his father was innocent and convinced of Keller’s guilt. Chris’s confidence in his father’s innocence was shaken. Kate talked to Ann and continued insisting that Larry is alive. Ann was forced to show Kate the letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. Ann gave Chris his brother’s letter. Chris read the contents out loud. It described how, upon learning about the investigation into the incident and his realization of his father’s guilt, Larry couldn’t bear to live anymore. When Joe discovered that Larry killed himself because of his father’s negligence, he realized that he killed all his sons. Joe was going into the house to get a jacket, and then he would drive to the jail, few moments later, a gunshot is heard, and Joe has killed himself.

Main themes :

1. Personal and social responsibility, The Keller family seems well stable, it is because of Joe. Who has work hard for his family. Meanwhile, he looses the value of human life. Essentially, he forgets the ‘real duty’ which he has been doing.
2. Guilt and innocence, Joe feels guilty for his deeds. He knows that Steve is an innocent man.
3. Punishment : Joe enjoys his roles as both husband and father. When truth comes out, Joe has to face not only a return to prison, but also the alienation of his remaining son and the destruction of his family.
4. Revenge – George comes to the Keller’s house seeking revenge.
5. Loss and memory: Kate refuses to accept the news related to Larry’s death, which helps her to avoid the consequences of Joe’s deeds.

In his renown play ‘All My Sons’ based on a true story, written post World War Two, Arthur Miller tells the story of a typical suburban American family who are deeply troubled as they try to deal with the loss of one of their sons. Although the former days are not the only thing that they are trying to put behind them as events from the past and present make sudden revelations and secrets are unveiled because not everyone has forgotten the court case that put Joe’s partner in jail, or the faulty engine heads his factory produced that sent 21 pilots out of the sky. The title ‘All My Sons’ suggests a certain connectedness and through a combination of well-developed characters and a prominent use of tension and foreshadow, Arthur Miller masterfully explores the theme of liability and guilt.

In the beginning of the play Chris confides in his father but his response was not what he anticipated. Chris admits that he has invited his brother’s fiance Annie with the intension of proposing marriage to her.

Chris: ‘You have such a talent for ignoring things

Keller: ‘I ignore what I gotta ignore. The girl is Larry’s girl’

Chris did not expect this reply, to Chris it was so out of character for his father to have such a firm standpoint on a matter such as this because here we learn Keller is known to put on an act of ignorance. This characterisation of him causes the audience to doubt their initial perspective of Joe. Chris’ remark suggests that Keller has an attitude towards life in which he does what he needs to do to look after himself, this foreshadows that this is Joe’s way of dealing with situations when they become unpleasant ‘he escapes with ignorance. The dramatic irony here gives the audience extra information to keep their interest as now we sense that there is something that Keller is ‘ignoring’ because really, he can’t deal with the consequences of his past actions, the reason his partner is in jail, why twenty-one pilots didn’t make it home. His guilt would destroy him.

Kate’s reaction to a seemingly innocent game with a neighbourhood kid stirs up suspicion within the audience that everything is not what it seems. When Kate discovers Joe’s policeman game with Bert, she cannot disguise her feelings.

Kate: ‘stop that, Bert. Go home. There’s no jail here… (turning on Keller furiously) I want you to stop that jail business… (she is shaken, her speech bitten off, extremely urgent.)’

Kate angrily scolds Keller because she doesn’t want him talking about jail, this creates tension as the audience gathers that there must be an underlying issue that makes Kate to react so suddenly. She is excessively afraid because although to a young boy it is simply a silly game; it is a far too real reality to Kate’ it makes her sick with worry. When Keller responds to her worries with ‘what have I got to hide’ it foreshadows that Joe does in fact have something to hide, he has committed a crime and Kate knows all about it. Her shared liability for Keller’s actions resulting in her guilty conscience causes her to be constantly waiting for the law to catch up with them.

Keller is a charismatic man who is well liked in the community, but his desperate need to explain himself comes across as nothing but being full of bravado. At this point in the play Keller insists on telling his side of the story that put his partner in jail:

‘walkin’ down the street that day I was guilty as hell. Except I wasn’t and there was a court paper in my pocket to prove I wasn’t… fourteen months later… [I was] a respected man again: bigger than ever.’

At this stage, the audience are in no position to trust Keller’s tale or that he is who he says he is as there are already sufficient hints to undermine his display. This characterises Joe as a dishonest, immoral man who will lie not only to others but himself. He is convinced that if he talks about the court case, he can manipulate people into believing he is innocent. Arthur Miller present Joe Keller as a tragic hero as he can justify his actions by saying he did it for the sake of his family so can’t truly be held responsible. However, he is aware not everyone will see it that way, so he decided to stick and live by a lie. His denial has sunk so deep that he has reinvented reality, in him mind he stands vindicated by the court but also his re-established his success blots out his guilt.

Miller uses Chris’ idealist nature to believe the good in people, especially his father to fully show the utter disbelief and horror in his realisation. His experiences in the war anger him further.

‘(with burning fury) For me! ’ I was dying every day and you were killing my boys and you did it for me? What the hell do you think I was thinking of, the Goddam business? Is that as far as your mind can see, the business? ..don’t you live in the world? You’re not even an animal, no animal kills his own, what are you? (With his fist he pounds down upon his father’s shoulder. He stumbles away, covering his face as he weeps)’

In conclusion ‘All My Sons’ by Arthur Miller succeeds in painting a vivid portrait of a family destroyed by guilt and liability, this theme is sufficiently carried through the play as each character faces their own trials. We see how Joe Keller is liable for supplying the army with faulty engine heads and indirectly killing his own son in the process, as we hear Larry commits suicide after discovering his dad’s actions. Kate Keller knew of her husband’s guilt and shared in his liability but desperately avoided it by losing herself in lost hope that Larry will come back. Meanwhile, Chris feels guilty for surviving the war and having money but his actions however he makes several choices in the play that reveal his unconscious knowledge of his father’s guilt: his difficulty in proposing to Ann, his rejection of the company’s new name, and his dreams of leaving the area and making his own way in the world. The author enhances the audience’s experience of the play through techniques of foreshadowing, tension, and characterisation. Similarly, the audience also benefit from the authors use of symbolism, dramatic irony and tragic heroism, these techniques help shape the viewers understanding of the play.

Section One

1.1 Writer’s biography

Arthur Asher Miller (1915-2005) is one of the most prominent twentieth-century dramatists after World War II. His theater is seen as one of the most fruitful, and it is vastly illustrative due to its diverse social ethics.

So, his name is echoed with the most distinguished American playwrights: Eugene O’Neil and Tennessee Williams to be the triumvirate of American Theater. He devotes almost seven decades of his own life striving to enrich and mark the American literature identity. One can observe in his drama various themes and symbols which, in fact, mirror the intensity of his dramatic creativity that characterizes the American society in an obvious manner. Two of the most recurrent themes in Miller’s drama are the American family and Dream. People by innate want to achieve their opulence indifferently by means which cannot be disconnected from the dogma of the American household. Thus, since launching his artistry, he has been away from being purely ‘social’ which may stem from the ‘problem plays’ that may show a kind of tedious style. For being away of that, he makes a fusion of public and private clashes to be the supreme interesting objectives that meet with the (Bloom,2005: 117-118 cravings of American character)

In this respect, Miller states: I can hear already my critics complaining that I am asking for are turn to what they call problem plays. That criticism is important only because it tells something important about the critic. It means that he can only conceive of man as a private entity, and his social relations as something thrown at him, something ‘affecting’ him only when he is conscious of society.

1.2 Definition the life lie a false ideal of piece of information from which an individual builds their life around.

LIFE LIE: ‘One could argue that religion (without any scientific proof) supports life lies where pilgrims and priests will build their lives around an organization which has no empirical evidence of any sound footing.’

‘LIFE LIE,’ in PsychologyDictionary.org, April 7, 2013, https:psychologydictionary.orglife-lie

However long there has been connecting between individuals, there has been untruthfulness. Everyone falsehoods, and there are however many purposes behind the lie as there are individuals articulating lies. Individuals can deceive save somebody’s inclination or to cause them to feel awful. In Arthur Miller’s play ‘Every one of My Sons’, it appears to be that each character is lies; from a little innocent exaggeration, to a major, ruinous falsehood that destroys a family. The improper family patriarch, Joe, annihilates his whole family due to his failure to confront outcomes . His need to cover reality to maintain a strategic distance from the truth is the thing that drives the demise of man, including himself. Lies will in general be isolated into two gatherings: little, harmless embellishments and enormous, ruinous untruths. With the previous, they will in general be to save somebody’s sentiments in a specific circumstance, yet this play likewise shows that an innocent exaggeration can turn ruinous. In ‘Every one of My Sons’, the patriarch Joe Keller and his child, Chris, have a discussion with respect to the way that they are taking care of into Kate, the mother’s, fancies that Larry is as yet alive. The exchange is :

Chris:’ We’ve made a terrible mistake with Mother.. being dishonest with her. That kind of thing always pays off, and now it’s paying off

Keller: What do you mean, dishonest?

Chris: You know Larry’s not coming back and I know it’.

In this statement, Chris is having a discovery. He understands that by allowing his mom to work under the hallucination that Larry is alive, he and his dad have hindered Kate from numerous points of view. Since they have been misdirecting her for quite a long time by not causing her see the truth, Kate has not had the option to finally accept reality for what it is nor has she had the option to work through her melancholy; all things considered, she sticks fanatically to the expectation that Larry will be returning whenever. This shows the evil idea of falsehoods; even the innocent embellishments can get damaging . Which began as an approach to save Kate from the despondency, her family without a doubt thought they were making the best choice by not being straightforward with her.

Arthur Miller’s Depiction of the Effect of Deceit as Illustrated in His Play, All My Sons. (2019, January 03). GradesFixer.

1.3 A brief Summary

All My Sons, a play in three acts, ‘

Joe Keller, an effective finance manager, Lives serenely with his significant other, Kate, and child, Chris, in a rural American area. They have oniy one sadness in their lives the deficiency of their other child, Larry, who went missing in World War Il. Following three years, Kate actually sticks to the expectation that her child is alive. Chris would like her to surrender that trust since he needs to wed Ann, an old neighbor and Larry’s previous life partner.

Ann shows up: Kate, detecting the purpose behind her visit, gets a little touchy. We learn that Ann’s dad is in jail for a crime he committed while working in Joe’s manufacturing plant. Confronted with a batch of imperfect machine parts, he patched them and sert the mouth, causing the death of 21 pilots during the war. ‘he never flew He doesn’t feel a responsibility to the rest of the world’. Turns out that Joe was additionally blamed for this wrongdoing and sentenced, but he was exonerated (liberated) during the appeal. Steve went to jail, Joe got back and made his business greater and better Soon after Ann’s appearance, her sibling George follows, directly from visiting his dad in. He knows what Chris has as a primary concern and is absolutely against him wedding Ann Joe and Kate give a valiant effort to enchant George into submission, yet at last it’s Ann who sends him away. She moles to wed Chris regardless.

The wedding of Chris and Ann is turning into a reality – and Kate can’t deal with it, since it implies Larry is genuinely dead. What’s more, if Larry is dead, she tells Chris, this is on the grounds that his own dad slaughtered him, since Larry was likewise a pilot. Chris at last stands up to his dad’s blame in delivering those blemished part.

However, Chris will do nothing about it. He will not request that his dad go to jail. Ann, who betrayed her own dad for a similar explanation, demands that Chris refuse to compromise. Joe Keller goes inside to get his things. A discharge is heard. He’s committed suicide.

However long there has been connecting between individuals, there has been untruthfulness. Everyone falsehoods and there are however many purposes behind the lie as there are individuals articulating lies. Individuals can deceive save somebody’s inclination or to cause them to feel awful. In Arthur Miller’s play ‘Every one of My Sons’, it appears to be that each character is lies; from a little innocent exaggeration, to a major, ruinous falsehood that destroys a family. The improper family patriarch, Joe, annihilates his whole family due to his failure to confront outcomes . His need to cover reality to maintain a strategic distance from the truth is the thing that drives the demise of man, including himself. Lies will in general be isolated into two gatherings: little, harmless embellishments and enormous, ruinous untruths. With the previous, they will in general be to save somebody’s sentiments in a specific circumstance, yet this play likewise shows that an innocent exaggeration can turn ruinous. In ‘Every one of My Sons’, the patriarch Joe Keller and his child, Chris, have a discussion with respect to the way that they are taking care of into Kate, the mother’s, fancies that Larry is as yet alive. The exchange is :

Chris:’ We’ve made a terrible mistake with Mother.. being dishonest with her. That kind of thing always pays off, and now it’s paying off

Keller: What do you mean, dishonest?

Chris: You know Larry’s not coming back and I know it.

In this statement, Chris is having a discovery. He understands that by allowing his mom to work under the hallucination that Larry is alive, he and his dad have hindered Kate from numerous points of view. Since they have been misdirecting her for quite a long time by not causing her see the truth, Kate has not had the option to finally accept reality for what it is nor has she had the option to work through her melancholy; all things considered, she sticks fanatically to the expectation that Larry will be returning whenever. This shows the evil idea of falsehoods; even innocent embellishments can get damaging. Which began as an approach to save Kate from despondency, her family without a doubt thought they were making the best choice by not being straightforward with her.

1. Arthur Miller’s Depiction of the Effect of Deceit as Illustrated in His Play, All My Sons. (2019, January 03). GradesFixer.