All My Sons by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller's play "All My Sons" is a tragedy set in post-World War Two America centred around a seemingly ideal American Family, the Kellers, as they struggle with secret from their past coming back to haunt them. The play focuses on Joe Keller, who sold defected cylinder to the military from his machine shop in order to save his business . The story is a domestic drama as it talks about the morality of the American people and how the idea of "The American Dream" has been corrupted.
Act 1 of the play opens with Joe Keller sitting in his backyard while reading the Sunday papers while having mundane conversations with his neighbours. The entire play is set in the Keller house backyard which compliments various moral messages of Miller's play. The backyard is supposed to act as a secluded domain for the Keller family to freely discuss private matters but we are shown how easy it is for other characters to walk into their property and that they could never truly be uninvolved with the rest of the community. The use of unelaborated dialogue and colloquial diction give each character believable and relatable characteristics and the mundane banter the characters have with each other establishes the characters to be ordinary everyday people. The stage directions that Miller uses are filled with symbolic significance with every dramatic pause or just the description of how a character delivers a line.
