Tongya 1

Sanchay Tongya

Dhrumi Shah

PAMAENG104

19th March 2021

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons

1.Introduction

Arthur Miller wrote the three-act play All My Sons in 1946. Like many of Miller's plays,

it also attempts to sort through the ideals shared by American families during WWII to decide

what "the good life" really meant in an era of rising economic circumstances. The play is based

on the real storey of a World War II manufacturing conspiracy. The play was a critical hit, and

many consider it a poignant satire of the American Dream.

2. Plot Overview

Joe Keller, a successful businessman, lives in a suburban American neighbourhood with

his wife, Kate, and son, Chris. They do have one sorrow in their lives: the death of their other

son, Larry, who went missing during World War II. Kate is also holding out hope that her son is

alive after three years. Chris asks her to leave the hope because he wants to marry Ann, an old

neighbour and Larry's ex-fiancee.

Ann has arrived. Kate becomes irritated when she realises the reason behind her visit. Ann's
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father is in jail for a felony he committed while working at Joe's plant, we hear. When faced with

a shipment of faulty machine parts, he patched them and sent them out, killing 21 pilots during

the battle. Joe was also charged and convicted of this felony, but he was exonerated during the

appeal. Steve went to prison; Joe returned home and grew his business. Soon after Ann arrives,

her brother George arrives, having just returned from visiting his father in jail. He is aware of

Chris' plans and is vehemently opposed to him marrying Ann. Joe and Kate do everything to get

George to submit, but it is Ann who actually drives him away. She is determined to marry Chris

no matter what. Chris and Ann's engagement is becoming a possibility – and Kate can't deal with

it because it means Larry is actually gone. And if Larry is missing, she tells Chris, it's because

his father murdered him as Larry was a pilot himself. Chris eventually confronts his father over

his father's remorse in exporting the faulty parts. Yet Chris is unable to interfere. He would not

even request that his father being imprisoned. Ann, who abandoned her father for the same

cause, demands that Chris take a firm stance. Joe Keller goes inside to collect his belongings. A

gunshot can be heard. He's committed suicide.

3. Character Analysis

3.1. Joe Keller

A devoted father and husband Joe's life revolves around his business and his family. He is

not selfish, but he is fiercely protective of his loved ones. The lie he said to escape a jail sentence

is the greatest offence on his conscience. His deed put his partner and his family in jeopardy.

Indirectly, he was responsible for the deaths of his son Larry and twenty-one other war pilots.

Having said that, he always felt he was acting in his family's best interests.
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3.2. Kate Keller

Kate is a devoted wife and mother. She is enamoured with her sons to the point of

insanity, so she refuses to consider Larry's death as a reality. She is also a superstitious person

who believes in magic and fortune-tellers. She makes an effort to persuade the others of Larry's

imminent return. Another facet of her personality is her tenacity in the face of adversity, as she

smiles while bearing the brunt of her husband's crime. To hold her family together, she has kept

the secret concealed deep inside her heart.

3.3. Chris Keller

Returning from the war as a hero, Chris finds the provincialism of his previous life

suffocating. Chris is a family guy who is loyal to his parents. He is uneasy about his father's

business's prosperity during the war when so many of his friends died in vain. He channels his

dissatisfaction into idealism and a social conscience that he does not have in his home. Others

see Chris' idealism as oppressive, as he asks others to make compromises that he would not make

while he lives happily (if guiltily) on his father's dime.

3.4. Larry Keller

Although he is dead throughout the entire plot, he is an important character in the storey.

He is more pragmatic and materialistic than Chris, like his father. He respects his father's beliefs

and the pressures of defending the family company. But, in the end, he serves as the story's moral

compass when he commits suicide to atone for his father's sins.

3.5. Ann Deever

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Ann is a beautiful and sensible young lady who has endured great tragedy and destruction

in her life. Her world has been ripped apart by the loss of her sweetheart and the indictment of

her father. She is aware of the reason for Larry's disappearance but withholds sharing it until the

very end to protect his family's feelings. She poses gracefully with Chris and then welcomes his

proposal because she shares in his morals and ideals. When coping with an irritated Kate, she is

headstrong and stubborn, but she never goes too far or harms her feelings.

3.6. George Deever

George is a concerned brother and son. Since learning of his father's unfortunate fate, he

is protective of his sister Ann and wants to save her from a painful marriage with Chris. He is,

however, rational and accepts that his father had several priors and had made his fair share of

other errors and misdemeanours. As shown by his shifting stances in the match, he is still

impressionable.

4. Themes

4.1. The American Dream

Joe Keller was well aware that shipping the faulty engine parts and then blaming Steve

Deever was unethical. Joe defended his actions by claiming that his obligations to his family

justified what he had done. Joe's acts are opposed by both of his sons by the conclusion of the

play. Joe Keller's storey demonstrates the limitations of the American Dream, as well as the

moral bankruptcy of profiting at the detriment of civilization as a whole.

4.2.Denial
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Miller's message in this play is clear: people who close their eyes to the repercussions of

their decisions and the fact of life suffer as a result of their ignorance. A major theme of this play

is the perniciousness of the psychological defence mechanism called “denial”. Kate in the play

struggles to accept the simple fact that Larry is no longer alive. This results in all kinds of

strange behaviour that distort her life and the lives of others. Three years after Larry's death, the

wound is still raw. Chris' battle-forged idealism will never encourage him to acknowledge Joe's

actions. Deep inside, he knows Joe is guilty, but he loves his father and does nothing.

4.3. War, Morality, and Consequences

The Second World War is not only the play's immediate global precursor; it is also

inextricably linked to its action. When the peace treaties were concluded, the war was far from

over. Instead, Chris, Joe, Steve, and others in the play bore the battle within them, transposing

the same life-and-death challenges they had once treated with a clear sense of moral intent into a

morally charged world. Even if the moral intent is no longer there, the horrors of war and death

continue to exist.

4.4. Family Obligation

Arthur Miller's play poses a dilemma of family obligation: the more one tries to provide

for one's family, the more one makes mistakes that end up hurting one's family. To defend his

family and ensure their financial prosperity, Joe tried to cover up his error at the plant and

blamed it on Steve. However, Joe's fateful decision lands Steve in jail, destroying Annie and

George's family; its later, unintended consequences jeopardise Chris and Annie's married

happiness and trigger Joe to commit suicide. This is the Keller family's final unravelling, as Kate
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advises Chris in the final scene to leave with Annie and pursue a new life far away.

5.Symbols

5.1.Tree

The tree has a dual symbolic meaning: it is planted to signify Larry's life, but it also acts

as a warning to Kate that many people think Larry is already dead and gone. When the tree is

destroyed, Kate interprets it not as a confirmation of Larry's passing, but rather as evidence of

the "falsity" of any memorial dedication to Larry, since one cannot memorialise someone who is

still alive.

5.2. Dry Socks

Chris’s dry socks are a complex symbol. Chris tells a short story about a GI in war who

gave him the last pair of dry socks after an encounter with Annie at the end of Act 1. Chris sees

this gesture, and these socks, as a symbol of the kind of caring and fraternity soldiers in combat.

But in the background of the play it is clear that in harmony, Chris hopes that all moral options

be like the moral clarity of the socks.

6.Conclusion

All my sons premiered on Broadway on January 29, 1947, at the Coronet Theatre in New

York City, and ran for 328 performances until closing on November 8, 1949. It won the New

York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Merrill, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl

Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Author and the Tony Award for Best Direction of

a Play. The play was adapted for films in 1948 and 1987.
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7. Works Cited

“ALL MY SONS: LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY.” TEACH WITH MOVIES,

teachwithmovies.org/all-my-sons-literary-analysis-of-the-play/.

“All My Sons.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Feb. 2021,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_My_Sons.

“All My Sons: Library of Ambiguity: D.school Public Library.” Library of Ambiguity | D.school

Public Library, dlibrary.stanford.edu/ambiguity/all-my-sons.

Casper. “Joe Keller's Motivation for Suicide in <Em>All My Sons</Em>: A New Reading.” The

Arthur Miller Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 2017, p. 86., doi:10.5325/arthmillj.12.2.0086.

Lassman, Eli Z., and Arthur Miller. All My Sons: Arthur Miller. York Press, 2007.

League, The Broadway. “IBDB.com.” IBDB, www.ibdb.com/broadway-show/all-my-sons-1455.

Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. Oxford University Press, 2019.

New York Drama Critics' Circle, www.dramacritics.org/.

Shmoop Editorial Team. “All My Sons Summary.” Shmoop, Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008,

www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/all-my-sons/summary/.

“A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller.” 2010, doi:10.5040/9781408184622.