In your opinion is Joe Keller a good man, a bad man or simply an ordinary person?

Authors Avatar

In your opinion is Joe Keller a good man, a bad man or simply an ordinary person?

             

          Joe Keller is a 60 year old man who lives in an American town during the Second World War. Joe is the father of two sons; he is the father of the Keller family. He works in a factory which used to make p-40 cylinder heads. He has a high status in the society. Before the start of the play Joe works with Steve Deever, at their P-40 factory. Joe is absent for one day, he is supposedly sick and Steve has to do a very important job. Some broken cylinder heads were produced that day, Steve phoned Joe; he asked Steve to sell them anyway, but the twenty one aeroplanes and pilots crashed. The twenty one pilots died in the act. All the blame was put on Steve because the telephone call where Joe had told him to disguise the cracks and sell them but it had been denied by Joe, so Steve was found guilty. Joe was declared innocent; Steve went to jail and took all the blame.

                 

               Joe is a very hard worker; he would do anything for his family. At his job, he works so hard only for his family and to bring money home to keep them all happy. We can see that Joe loves his family a lot because he puts in Steve Jail only to get money from the cylinder heads. He has a lot of friends, like Bert. We know this because at the start of the play we can see him play with Bert:

Join now!

 “For what! Bert, the whole neighbourhood is depending on you. A policeman does not ask questions. Now peel the eyes!”

 With this quote we can also see how sociable Joe is and how he loves small children. We can see that the children like him. Joe has a lot of guts, when he comes back from Jail he deliberately walked down the street although a lot of people though he wasn’t innocent. Chris says he has a lot of guts for doing this. He tells him:

“Joe McGuts”

 he says it with a sense of humour. We can also ...

This is a preview of the whole essay