During the course of this essay I will be investigating a play called 'All My Sons' by Arthur Miller.

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During the course of this essay I will be investigating a play called ‘All My Sons’ by Arthur Miller. The play was written during the war and was set in the suburbs of a town 700 miles from New York. Arthur thought that if the play was even published if would be published during the war but his expectations weren’t to be as it was published when the war was over. An atomic bomb had ended the war, this bomb was followed by a shock of waves and heavy winds and the radiation lasted several years and killed 100,000 more people.

As it turned out the play was produced during a period of peace.

‘Memories are especially short and by the time the played opened in 1947 it was already difficult for people to believe that people would knowingly ship out lethal ammunitions to the armed forces’

So understandably quite a few adjustments had to be made.

The play is in relation to a man called Joe Keller who knowingly shipped out a hundred and twenty faulty cylinder heads for P40 planes, that killed 21 pilots, he was in the penitentiary for a while but was released as he denied a phone call to his colleague Steve Deever about coming into work that morning, and as the jury couldn’t prove a phone call he was then later released but Steve was put to jail and remains there throughout the play.

Joe had a son called Larry who was at war when he heard about what his father had done and unfortunately couldn’t live with the fact that his father had killed so many men he commited suicide. Larry is mentioned frequently during the play. His mother Kate still believes he is alive right up until the end. And Chris, their son is very unhappy and very much disillusioned but everything as he went to war and came back to nothing but his father’s business which he;

‘Likes for about an hour a day’

The setting of the play is ‘the back yard of the Keller home’. The ‘closely planted poplars lends the yard a secluded atmosphere’ and we have the sense of a closely knit neighbourhood as people enter and leave the yard. Sue said to Ann that her husband ‘spends so much time here, they’ll be charging him rent’.

The Keller’s becomes a meeting place for neighbours, visitors and the poker players who gather every Saturday night.

Friendship among the families is admirable, at least on the surface. Jim Bayliss, the doctor is the first person in the play to speak; he’s in the Keller yard where he seems to spend so much of his time.

Bert, the child in the play shows the neighbourhood and how ‘together’ they were.

Ann Deever agrees that the Kellers are popular.

‘People like to do things for the Kellers. Been that way since I can remember.’

Even George who’s relationship with the Kellers has been damaged by his Fathers’ revelation of events concerning Joe and his father.

‘I have never felt at home anywhere but here’.

The people who went out to war and came home have never really settled. They are disillusioned, unmarried and very unhappy with their lives. People that were at war had achieved high ranks and great promotion, came home and weren’t as well-off as those who never even went out to war. They were left working for men like Joe Keller.

George and Chris both went to war together and were both eagle scouts and were highly principled but in the ‘real world’ those achievements meant nothing whatsoever.

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George studied law in the hospital and became a lawyer, but when he got out he didn’t think there was much of a law. When Chris asked him how the law was, he replied;

‘I don’t know. When I was studying in the hospital it seemed sensible, but outside there doesn’t seem to be much of a law.’

Even though he owns his own office he still doesn’t seem to be getting much business because when his sister Ann asked him when he started wearing a hat he answered back;

‘Today. From now on I decided to ...

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