by passing the business onto his sons. He
forgets, however, that he has a responsibility
which extends far beyond the family. Indeed, in
some senses, this had been a central theme of
the 1930s literature with which Miller was so
familiar. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
was about the need to look beyond the family,
as was Clifford Odets’ play Awake and Sing. For
Karl Marx, the family had been a primary
hindrance to social justice and Marx had been a
point of reference for many in the 1930s.
Joe Keller denies his guilt in public. How far
does he also deny it in private, deny it, that is,
to himself? Certainly he seems to be a man for
whom appearances matter more than reality. It
is clear, however, that he no longer exercises
true power in the family. That has moved to his
wife, Kate.
Kate Keller
Kate carries the burden of knowledge. She
knows, and yet denies, that Joe is guilty. She
denies that her son, Larry, is dead. She does so
partly as any mother might resist such a truth
but also, perhaps, because if she
acknowledges his death she might also have to
confront the death of those other airmen who
died because Joe supplied faulty parts.
She has stopped the clock, and that has
consequences. Her other son must not marry,
or at least not marry Ann. Her husband must be
made to play the part of an amiable fool,
infantilised so as to be free of responsibility. She
turns herself into an actress, performing the role
in which she has cast herself. It is her strength,
however, or at least her determination, which
sustains the illusion of a carefree family. But
only just below the surface, barely suppressed,
is a truth that can destroy them all.
The other side of her determination,
however, is cruelty. Inclining to one son she
disregards the needs of another. She fights to
drive Ann out, and with her a reminder of Larry’s
death and her husband’s guilt. She is fighting
for her survival and the survival of a family
which, in truth, no longer exists. At the end, she
has lost everything: both sons and her husband.
She is bereft. In struggling to sustain her version
of the family she has destroyed it.
Chris Keller
Chris Keller comes back from the war having
seen men sacrifice themselves for others.
There, he feels, was a functioning idealism. But
in the name of what did men fight and die? He
returns to find a world going on as if nothing has
happened, to discover people dedicated to
nothing more elevated than making money. In
an original draft we learn that he had concealed
the fact of his family’s wealth, guilty that they
were profiting from the war, and this before
there was any question of fraud. He returns
shocked by the huge plant that has been built
up. Those details disappear from the final text
but there is still a sense of unease which
eventually deepens into a confession of guilt.
He is an idealist, and sees himself as such,
while oddly suggesting that he has always had
to stand back, to sacrifice his needs for those of
others. There is, however, a cruelty in this man,
as in so many of the other characters. In an
early draft he was unforgiving in the war. Where
others would let enemy soldiers go, he was
unrelenting. Indeed he was known as “Killer
Keller”. Again this is stripped out of the final
version but that relentless cruelty is, finally, what
drives his father to his death. It is not George
Deever, son of the imprisoned man, who
precipitates Joe Keller’s suicide: it is Chris
Keller. Beneath the social play, there is an
elemental Greek drama being enacted here as
fathers and sons destroy one another and
society trembles.
The Neighbours
The neighbours are a chorus, commenting on
the action, but they also resonate the central
themes of the play. Frank, we are told, is
“uncertain of himself…thirty-two and balding;”
Jim, a doctor, “wry, self-controlled… but with a
wisp of sadness that clings to his self-effacing
humour”. There is an air of disappointment, of
failed aspirations, regret. They contain in
themselves the conflicts at the heart of the play,
acknowledging, as they do, a tension between
the pragmatic and the ideal, and recognising
the compromises that seem an inevitable
aspect of daily living. Marriage itself, on the
basis of those in this play. offers an image of
such compromises, a fact that will surely cast
its shadow over the proposed relationship
between Chris Keller and Ann Deever. The
doctor, especially, has sacrificed his idealistic
vision of his profession for hard cash and the
word ‘money’ echoes through the text.
George Deever
Miller has said that George represents the
return of the repressed. It is he who breaks into
this apparently happy family, bringing with him
the past, except that the past has never been
laid to rest. He, too, has been guilty of cruelty in
abandoning his father, and comes to insist on
justice. In the end, however, he is easily
deflected, pulled into the play that Kate scripts
and stage manages. Though he appears to be
the figure who can smash the apparent serenity
of this embattled family, he is no more than a
catalyst. He lacks the relentlessness of his
sister and of Kate.
