Arthur Miller's All My Sons

All My Son’s

The action of the play is set in August 1947, in the mid-west of the U.S.A. The events occurred between Sunday morning and around two o'clock the following morning.

Arthur Miller's All My Sons is a perfect example of a literary work that builds up to, and then reaches, an ending that simultaneously satisfies the reader's expectations and brings all the play's themes to a dramatic conclusion. As the past slowly bubbles up into the present, the reader begins to need certain confrontations - and certain judgments - to occur. The finale that Miller deftly crafted for this play is filled with a dramatic irony that leaves the reader thinking. In the end the wrong has been avenged, and the inner and outer circles -family and society - have come crashing together.
Even though Miller is slow to establish his main theme in the exposition, once set, the main themes develop into powerful messages that hold meaning for all: if one cannot look beyond their personal circle, they are condemned to an ignorant existence ended by a tragic moment of realization. Joe Keller goes through this slow, and painful, process of realization. It has been hard work for Keller to maintain his blind ignorance toward his crime, and his guilt; however, despite his efforts, his tainted past is continually creeping into his sacred inner circle, the only world that Keller allows himself to recognize. When Keller sees that his inner circle is only a tiny speck in the greater outer circle - and that those people, whom he thought were unrelated to him, were actually all his sons - he takes his own life, an acceptable ending for the reader.
As Miller's play ends, the personal beliefs of each character come into question. Chris is forced to look at his father, and his father's guilt, in the harsh light of reality for the first time. ‘Father' had always meant the personification of goodness and infallibility to Chris. When reality's light illuminates the cracks in Keller's good-guy facade, Chris can only run away. Ironically, the only person who truly realizes the full consequences of Keller’s crime are Keller himself; he dies to regain his conscience. Another belief that shatters under reality's torrents is Mrs. Keller's belief that her son survived the war. She is forced to confront this pipe dream in the end, when Ann brings a letter from Larry, documenting his planned suicide. As in O'Neil's The Iceman Cometh, this confrontation of the pipe dream does not bring peace - but death.

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Joe Keller, the chief character, is a man who loves his family above all else, and has sacrificed everything, including his honour, in his struggle to make the family prosperous. He is now sixty-one. He has lost one son in the war, and is keen to see his remaining son, Chris, marry. Chris wishes to marry Ann, the former fiancée of his brother, Larry. Their mother, Kate, believes Larry still to be alive. Arthur Miller, the playwright, found the idea for Joe's crime in a true story, which occurred during the second world war: a manufacturer knowingly shipped out defective parts. These had suffered mechanical failures, which had led to the deaths of many soldiers. The fault was discovered, and the manufacturer convicted. In All My Sons, Miller examines the morality of the man who places his narrow responsibility to his immediate family above his wider responsibility to the men who rely on the integrity of his work.

The play ‘All My Sons’ was thought to be published during the First World War when people really did care what happened during it. The country had just been through a depression, which meant it is routinely cited as proof that unregulated capitalism is bad, and that only a massive welfare state, huge amounts of economic regulation, and other interventions, can save capitalism from itself. To bring them out of this they were made enter World War II in December of 1941, the year generally considered to be the end of the Great Depression. Federal outlays skyrocketed as the country geared up for war. This very large boost to the economy seems to have brought the depression to an end. The people in the play who seem to have most gained from this is the people who stayed home for example the main character Joe Keller and Kate Keller none of which could have went to war are now befitting the from the prices the American army were willing to pay for parts to make machinery. Later in the play it emerges that after the war people in general had more money and the whole American dream was now starting to unfold and be realised by most who lived in America but the exceptions in the play seems to be any of the men who went to fight they all still have the scares of war and the fact that when they came home people seemed to have moved on and tried to keep themselves prosperous, a lot of the ones who went to war are now home and very disillusioned about why and what they were fighting for. Take anyone of the others who stayed at home Dr Jim Bayliss this man stayed he is now married got a great job which he might not like but it pays the bills with some change left over, but when younger like Chris Jim did have all the idealistic ideas over how he would do experiments and save millions of people you see this compromise very clearly when

FRANK: I would love to help humanity, on a Warner Brothers salary.

But as he goes on it shows he needs the money to pay for him and his wife’s expensive way of living. Then there is Frank Lubey a man who was always just out of the required age groups being brought in, this man is not liked as he is the same age as Chris and George Deever but he is married uneducated but still earning enough to get him a house which is in with them who are business owners and doctors. It never says in the play that he is uneducated but that becomes clear in act 1 when he isn’t reading the paper he reads Andy Gump which was a child’s cartoon strip.

In sharp contrast the ones who went to war and made it back are now not married in jobs which don’t inspire them we know this because Chris refers to business when he says “that inspires me now only for hour a day, and George is an unsuccessful lawyer who was never married.

During the play Kate is the only one with real hope that Chris is still alive but as if to say to here stop dreaming the memorial tree blows down, she never stops believing and it is not until the letter of Ann’s comes out in act 3 that she realises she has been defending and lying not only for her husband but for the murder of her son and twenty-one other air force pilots. In the letter Ann showed Kate and the rest of the family this finely proves what Larry really through of his father when he red the news of what his father had done both Chris and Larry would never have been able to forgive their father because the men they went out to stand and fight with were always a more bonding and strong family these men lived and died for each other but its not the same when the planes fall out of the sky, at least when they were sent up into the air they would have had chance to save themselves using their skill. Chris was always told by his father that he should understand that it was done for him and that everything that he has done has been for him but the whole table turns when the truth comes out and it is then that Joe Keller recognises that to restore justice and pay for what he did he would have to sacrifice his own life, he knows that this is the only way he will get forgiveness from all his sons.

‘All My Sons’ is not a very pleasant play. In it Arthur Miller tries to show us how we can be better. The date of its first performance (1947) is clearly significant. It was always intended that the play if ever produced would be done when the war was still continuing but as it happens it was quickly ended and Arthur Miller had to rewrite large parts of the play so people could relate to it and understand what was being said. Peoples memories seem to be very short as when it came out people in general could not believe what was being said but now when I look at it I well believe him as people are really that selfish and cruel. The poem is well written and is crowned with a superb ending.

By Paul Mallon 11A 1