All My Sons

All My Sons - Play by Arthur Miller 

 Welcome readers! As a Part of my Bachelor's studies at shamaldas Arts college, affiliated with MK Bhavnagar university. In this Particular blog, I will discuss Arthur Miller's Play - 'All My Sons' offering a comprehensive analysis enriched with additional insights. 

All My sons is a three act play written in 1946 by Arthur Miller.  It first opened in New York City in the year 1947, winning the Drama critics' Awards for Best New Play and establishing Arthur Miller as a leading voice in the American theatre. An immediate success with audiences and critics, the play has frequently been revived on Broadway and elsewhere around the world. All My sons is the story of Joe keller, who owned a munitions factory with his friend and neighbour. After being charged with shipping defective aircraft engines during world war II, Joe's partner was convicted, but Joe was exonerated. The play explores the keller families' complex relationships, which are burned with shame, denial, guilt and grief. The play also addresses the issues of truth, loyalty, wealth and love. The story questions both the military - industrial complex and the American Dream. 

'All My Sons' was considered Arthur Miller's first significant play. With an underlying theme of guilt and responsibility, the drama centres on Joe keller, a manufacturer of war materials, whose substandard and defective airplane parts cause the death of his own son and other fliers during World War II. 

‘The story is a reflection of society and how people driven by a lust for money can stoop to any extent to acquire wealth’

This play set during the second world war. Joe keller, who has failed to fulfil his social obligations and has failed to recognise the role of society after he is blinded by lust for money during the war. He lives peacefully with his wife kate and his son chris, but had another son Larry who died in a plane crash during the war. 

About Arthur Miller :-   

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. Winner of several Tony Awards, he was one of the most prominent American playwrights of the 20th century and was known for his ability to write engaging stories that tackled complex themes such as the American Dream, identity, and morality. He was also known for his political activism and outspoken criticism of the government and society. 

Among his most popular plays are - All My sons( 1947), Death of a salesman (1949), The Crucible ( 1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits ( 1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century. He combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters inner lives. 

Throughout his life and work, Miller has remained socially engaged and has written with conscience, clarity, and compassion. As Chris Keller says to his mother in All My Sons, 

"Once and for all you must know that there's a universe of people outside, and you're responsible to it." 

Miller's work is infused with his sense of responsibility to humanity and to his audience. "The playwright is nothing without his audience," he writes. "He is one of the audience who happens to know how to speak." In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times.  

Arthur Miller has dedicated himself to the investigation of the moral plight of the white American working class. With a sense of realism and a strong ear for the American vernacular, Miller has created characters whose voices are an important part of the American landscape. His insight into the psychology of desperation and his ability to create stories that express the deepest meanings of struggle, have made him one of the most highly regarded and widely performed American playwrights. In his eighty-fifth year, Miller remains an active and important part of American theater.

 Characters of the Play :- 

  

 1. Joe Keller :- Husband, father, and patriarch of the Keller family. Joe is the protagonist of All My Sons. Before the play begins, he and his business partner, Steve Deever, owned a munitions business that manufactured and shipped faulty aircraft engines to the Air Force during World War II. Steve went to prison for the crime, but Joe was falsely exonerated. During the time of the play, Joe’s son, Chris, is part owner of the business. Joe appears to be successful and happy, but he is actually tormented and plagued with feelings of guilt.

2. Kate Keller :-  Wife of Joe and mother to Larry and Chris Keller. Kate waits in vain for Larry to return from the war even though he’s been missing in action for three years. A nervous, emotional woman, Kate knows about Joe’s role in the munitions crime but lives in a state of denial. Kate is superstitious enough to believe that astrology will reveal whether Larry is alive. She suffers from headaches, nightmares, and insomnia, symptoms of a tortured soul.

3. Chris Keller :- Joe and Kate’s son and Larry’s brother. Chris commanded a company during the war and now works in Joe’s business. Chris wants to marry Ann Deever, Larry’s former girlfriend, and does not support Kate’s denial of Larry’s death. Chris has been changed by the war and is morally upright, empathetic, and compassionate.

 

4. Ann Deever :-  Steve Deever’s daughter, Larry’s former girlfriend, and Chris’s fiancée. As the antagonist in the play, her visit to the Kellers’ home by Chris’s invitation sets the play’s action into motion. Ann is compassionate and loving, though she hasn’t spoken to Steve since his incarceration. She loves Chris and wants to be honest with his family. She is realistic about what happened to Larry and carries a secret that she hesitates to reveal. 

5. George Deever :-  Ann’s brother and Steve’s son. George served in the war, and as Kate observes, the war left him looking much older than he is. He cares deeply for Ann, but he believes that he has the power to forbid her to marry Chris. George is an attorney who works in New York City. Ashamed of his father’s munitions crime, he has rejected Steve, who is in prison.

6. Dr. Jim Bayliss :- One of the Kellers’ neighbors. Jim, about forty, and his wife, Sue, live in the house where Ann and George grew up. Jim longs to be a medical researcher rather than a practicing physician but feels constrained by both the postwar culture and his wife to make money in a more traditional way. 

7. Sue Bayliss :-  Jim’s wife and neighbor to the Kellers. Sue is concerned about status and appearances and is a bit of a neighborhood gossip. Jim blames his unhappiness on Sue and her need for money. Sue is not afraid to tackle sensitive issues with Ann or Kate. She speaks her mind and doesn’t back down.

Unseen characters :- 

 

 Larry Keller :-  Larry has been MLA for some years at the start of the play. However, he has a significant effect on the play through his mother's insistence that he is still alive and his brother's love for Larry's childhood sweetheart, Ann. Comparisons are also made in the story between Larry and Chris; in particular, their father describes Larry as the more sensible one with a "head for business".

 

Steve Deever :- George and Ann's father. Steve is sent to prison for shipping faulty cylinders to air force a crime that not only he but also the exonerated Keller committed.

Play Performance :- 

Plot :- 

  Joe and Kate Keller had two sons, Chris and Larry. Keller owned a manufacturing plant with Steve Deever, and their families were close. Steve's daughter Ann was Larry's beau, and George was their friend. When the war came, both Keller boys and George were drafted. During the war, Keller's and Deever's manufacturing plant had a very profitable contract with the U.S. Army, supplying airplane parts. One morning, a shipment of defective parts came in. Under pressure from the army to keep up the output, Steve Deever called Keller, who had not yet come into work that morning, to ask what he should do. Keller told Steve to weld the cracks in the airplane parts and ship them out. Steve was nervous about doing this alone, but Keller said that he had the flu and could not go into work. Steve shipped out the defective but possibly safe parts on his own. 

Later, it was discovered that the defective parts caused twenty-one planes to crash and their pilots to die. Steve and Keller were arrested and convicted, but Keller managed to win an appeal and get his conviction overturned. He claimed that Steve did not call him and that he was completely unaware of the shipment. Keller went home free, while Steve remained in jail, shunned by his family.

Meanwhile, overseas, Larry received word about the first conviction. Racked with shame and grief, he wrote a letter to Ann telling her that she must not wait for him. Larry then went out to fly a mission, during which he broke out of formation and crashed his plane, killing himself. Larry was reported missing.

Three years later, the action of the play begins. Chris has invited Ann to the Keller house because he intends to propose to her--they have renewed their contact in the last few years while she has been living in New York. They must be careful, however, since Mother insists that Larry is still alive somewhere. Her belief is reinforced by the fact that Larry's memorial tree blew down in a storm that morning, which she sees as a positive sign. Her superstition has also led her to ask the neighbor to make a horoscope for Larry in order to determine whether the day he disappeared was an astrologically favorable day. Everyone else has accepted that Larry is not coming home, and Chris and Keller argue that Mother should learn to forget her other son. Mother demands that Keller in particular should believe that Larry is alive, because if he is not, then their son's blood is on Keller's hands.

Ann's brother George arrives to stop the wedding. He had gone to visit Steve in jail to tell him that his daughter was getting married, and then he left newly convinced that his father was innocent. He accuses Keller, who disarms George by being friendly and confident. George is reassured until Mother accidentally says that Keller has not been sick in fifteen years. Keller tries to cover her slip of the tongue by adding the exception of his flu during the war, but it is now too late. George is again convinced of Keller's guilt, but Chris tells him to leave the house.

Chris's confidence in his father's innocence is shaken, however, and in a confrontation with his parents, he is told by Mother that he must believe that Larry is alive. If Larry is dead, Mother claims, then it means that Keller killed him by shipping out those defective parts. Chris shouts angrily at his father, accusing him of being inhuman and a murderer, and he wonders aloud what he must do in response to this unpleasant new information about his family history.

Chris is disillusioned and devastated, and he runs off to be angry at his father in privacy. Mother tells Keller that he ought to volunteer to go to jail--if Chris wants him to. She also talks to Ann and continues insisting that Larry is alive. Ann is forced to show Mother the letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. The note basically confirms Mother's belief that if Larry is dead, then Keller is responsible- not because Larry's plane had the defective parts, but because Larry killed himself in response to the family responsibility and shame due to the defective parts.

Mother begs Ann not to show the letter to her husband and son, but Ann does not comply. Chris returns and says that he is not going to send his father to jail, because that would accomplish nothing and his family practicality has finally overcome his idealism. He also says that he is going to leave and that Ann will not be going with him, because he fears that she will forever wordlessly ask him to turn his father in to the authorities.

Keller enters, and Mother is unable to prevent Chris from reading Larry's letter aloud. Keller now finally understands that in the eyes of Larry and in a symbolic moral sense, all the dead pilots were his sons. He says that he is going into the house to get a jacket, and then he will drive to the jail and turn himself in. But a moment later, a gunshot is heard--Keller has killed himself.

Thematic study of the Play :- 

 1. The Past :-  All My Sons is a play about the past. It is inescapable--but how exactly does it affect the present and shape the future? Can crimes ever be ignored or forgotten? Most of the dialogue involves various characters discovering various secrets about the recent history of the Keller family. Miller shows how these past secrets have affected those who have kept them. The revelation of the secrets is presented as unavoidable--they were going to come out at some point, no matter what, and it is through Miller's manipulation of the catalysts that the truths are all revealed on the same day. While the revelations are unavoidable, so are their fatal consequences. 

2. Business :-  Keller argues that his actions during the war were defensible ass requirements of good business practice. He also frequently defines himself as an uneducated man, taking pride in his commercial success without traditional book learning. Yet, his sound business sense actually leads to his downfall. This failure is connected with Miller's leftist politics and the play's overall criticisms (shared by some conservatives) of a capitalist system that encourages individuals to value their business sense over their moral sense. How could rules that govern business be exempt from the moral norms and laws governing the rest of society?

3. Blame :- Each character in the play has a different experience of blame. Joe keller tries to blame anyone and everyone for crimes during the war, first by letting his partner go to jail. Later, when he is confronted with the truth, he blames business practice and the U.S. Army and everyone he can think of- except himself. When he finally does accept blame, after learning how Larry had taken the blame and shame on himself, Keller kills himself. Chris, meanwhile, feels guilty for surviving the war and for having money, but when the crimes are revealed, he places the blame squarely on his father's shoulders. He even blames his father for his own inability to send his father to prison. These are just a few examples of the many instances of deflected blame in this story, and this very human impulse is used to great effect by Miller to demonstrate the true relationships and power plays between characters as they try to maintain self-respect as well as personal and family honor. 

4. The American Dream :- Miller points out the flaw with a merely economic interpretation of the American Dream as business success alone. Keller sacrifices other parts of the American Dream for simple economic success. Has he given up part of his basic human decency (consider the pilots) and a successful family life. Miller critiques a system that would encourage profit and greed at the expense of human life and happiness. The challenge is to recover the full American Dream of healthy communities with thriving families, whether or not capitalism is the economic system that leads to this happy life. 

Conclusion :- To conclude,  "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller is a compelling drama that exposes the consequences of greed and deception within a family. Through its tragic narrative, the play highlights the importance of honesty and the devastating impact of unethical choices on individuals and their loved ones. 

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