Joe Keller is a tragic hero, who has many qualities and one flaw.In the play 'All My Sons', Arthur Miller creates the character Joe Keller

Joe Keller, the chief character, is a man who loves his family above all else, and has sacrificed everything, such as his honour, in his struggle to make his family prosperous. He appears to be a very selfless man who has no evil inside of him. He is now sixty-one years of age. He has lost one son in the war and has one remaining son. The loss of his son causes us to feel sympathy towards him. Joe Keller is not a bad man. This effectively makes us see him as a superior man. He loves his family but does not see that the universal "family" has a higher priority. He may think he has got away with his crime, but everyday in his mind, he is troubled by the thought of it. He has this guilt locked up inside him. He has compartmentalized it to avoid feeling guilty. He relies on his wife Kate, not to betray his guilt.

The central character of this tragedy is Joe. Arthur Miller shows this in the play because the play is about a tragedy. In this play the tragedy evolves around Joe because he is the one who has committed the tragic mistake. Therefore we always refer back to him. As a result making, Joe Keller the central character of the play.

Joe’s character is shown through his relations with others such as Chris and Kate. Chris feels betrayed by his father, because he never told him the truth about what happened with the broken cylinder heads. Chris thought he knew the truth throughout his life and then suddenly, he finds out it was all a lie. This is what makes Chris feel betrayed. Kate deeply loves her family and especially her husband. She also follows take family above society. So to keep her family going, she forces the idea that Larry is still alive, to stop her husband, Joe from feeling guilty of what he did. She tells everyone that Larry is just missing, to ease the guilt of Joe’s mistake.

The audience’s idea of Joe change as the play progresses. At the beginning of the play we see Joe as a self-made man. He has done well for himself and is a good family man. We see that he cares for his family and that he is looked up to as a figure in the community. Then later on in the play, when we find out about the broken cylinder heads, we see Joe as a different person. Now Joe Keller is a person who escaped a period of time in Jail. He did this by accusing his friend, partner and neighbour, of the crime that he actually was guilty for. So now we see Joe not as such a high figure, but rather a man who has a major flaw. Now throughout the poem we see him with this one flaw that changes his whole character. This one flaw is what makes Keller a tragic hero. Like a tragic hero, in the end Joe Keller, dies because he committed suicide. The reason he killed himself is because he could no longer live with this guilt and that he wanted set the ‘order of the universe’ straight, once again. In conclusion, Joe Keller fits the persona of a tragic hero.