Introduction :-
All My Sons is a three-act play written in 1946 by Arthur Miller. It opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947, and ran for 328 performances. It was directed by Elia Kazan (to whom it is dedicated), produced by Kazan and Harold Clurman, and 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.
About the Author :-
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theatre. 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 and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and married Marilyn Monroe. In 1980, he received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. He received the Praemium Imperiale prize in 2001, the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002, and the Jerusalem Prize in 2003, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 1999.
His Notable works include,All My Sons,Death of a Salesman,The Crucible and A View from the Bridge.
Plot - Summary of the Play :-
All My Sons, a play in three acts, is set in a small town several years after World War Two, and begins with Jim Bayliss, a doctor, and Joe Keller, head of the Keller family, sitting in Keller’s backyard, reading the paper. A storm the previous night has shorn in half a tree that is revealed to memorialize Larry Keller, one of two Keller children—the son who did not survive the war. Chris, the other Keller son and a junior partner in the family manufacturing business, comes outside and tells his father, Joe, after Jim leaves, that the family cannot continue leading on Kate, Joe’s wife, in the belief that Larry is still living. Frank Lubey, another neighbor of the Keller’s (along with his wife Lydia Lubey), is using astrology to determine if Larry is alive, and he brings this information to Kate later in the play, but for the most part, Chris believes that all in the town have come to the same conclusion: that, after three years, Larry will not be returning to the small town, that Larry’s plane crash in the war was fatal.
Chris also tells his father that Annie, Larry’s former girlfriend who is visiting the Keller’s from New York, is there because Chris intends to propose marriage to her. Joe has no real problem with the idea in itself, but Joe fears that Kate will not permit it, since Annie is “Larry’s girl,” and to give Annie to Chris would mean that Larry is really dead. Kate comes outside, as does Annie, and a series of strained conversations ensue, in which Chris attempts to demonstrate his affection for Annie, and Kate tries to emphasize that Larry is not dead and Annie is not “Chris’s girl.” Slowly, throughout the first act, it is revealed that Annie’s father, Steve, was a former employee of Joe’s at the manufacturing company during the war, and that Steve apparently OK’d the production of faulty plane parts, which were shipped to American planes, and which caused the death of 21 pilots in plane crashes. Steve went to jail for his negligence, but Joe was released, arguing in court that Steve acted alone, and that Joe did not force him to ship the defective parts.
Joe and Kate worry that Annie has come to stir up trouble in the Keller family regarding Joe’s guilt in the manufacturing affair, and this, too, complicates the possibility of Chris and Annie’s wedding. Chris also tells Annie that he has a hard time navigating the moral complexities of post-war life, and he relates a story from the war, in which a soldier gave him his last pair of dry socks, as an indication of the moral simplicity of battle.
George, Annie’s brother, calls long-distance, from Columbus, where Steve is imprisoned, saying he, too, is going to visit the Keller home that evening. Annie worries that George is coming with revelations about the Joe-Steve manufacturing affair, and Kate tells Joe to prepare himself for George’s questioning. George arrives, in a huff, and though Jim and Chris attempt to calm him, George accuses Joe of knowingly inducing Steve to “take the fall” for the manufacturing failures. George believes Steve’s story, that Joe himself told Steve over the phone to shellac over the defective parts. George believes that Joe feigned sickness that evening to keep from going into the plant, thus retaining distance from the events, which enabled Joe to place the blame entirely on Steve. Joe denies these accusations to George, who leaves the house, but as Annie runs after him, Joe announces to Chris, and in front of Kate, that in fact George’s story is true.
Chris is aghast, not just that this father produced the defective parts, but that Joe lied to put Steve in jail, and proceeded to make a fortune from the factory in the post-war boom. Chris feels complicit in his father’s immorality, and goes for a drive that evening, while Joe and Kate weep on the house’s back porch.
At the play’s end, it is two in the morning the following day, and Chris returns from his drive to find Annie, Joe, and Kate outside. Annie, who wants Kate to believe that Larry is truly dead so that she and Chris can be married, shows to Kate a letter Larry wrote her the day before his death, in which he said his plane would “go missing” in an act of suicide, out of the shame Larry feels for Joe’s and Steve’s guilt. Joe, who for a long time had comforted himself with the idea that he was not responsible for his own son’s death, realizes, when Chris reads the letter aloud, that he has not only killed 21 pilots—he has also killed, indirectly, his own son. Joe remarks that “all the soldiers . . . are his sons,” and goes upstairs, feigning that he will turn himself in to the small town’s jail. But a gunshot is heard; Joe has killed himself in the house, and though Chris tells his mother, outside, that he didn’t intend for this to happen, Kate tells Chris and Annie, calmly, to go far away and start a new family elsewhere, since the guilt that has ravaged the Keller family can bring them nothing but harm. The play ends.
Characters of the Play :-
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.
Kate Keller/Mother
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.
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.
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.
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.
Themes of the Play :-
Money and Family versus Moral Integrity
Joe Keller cares most about money and family, yet his son, Chris, professes to care more about moral integrity. For the Keller family, the two values of taking financial care of one’s family and moral integrity are mutually exclusive. To serve his family and his economic security, Joe lied and betrayed his business partner and his country. To serve his own moral integrity, Chris rejects Joe’s values but sacrifices part of his own integrity in the process.
In the capitalist, postwar setting of the play, the pursuit of financial success is fueled by the American Dream. Joe shipped the defective engines because he wanted to make money and stay in business. His devotion to money and providing for his family corrupted him. Chris has always felt somewhat ashamed of his family’s wealth and strives for the greater good in society. Even the women in the play, Sue and Ann, talk about marriage as a source of economic security. Likewise, Jim Bayliss regrets his choice to practice traditional medicine rather than conduct research because of his wife Sue’s wish for material wealth. This worship of money is at the heart of the postwar American Dream, and the pursuit and rejection of money represent a central theme of All My Sons.
Taking Responsibility for One’s Actions
At the play’s center stand three questions of three interrelated responsibilities: Who is responsible for Larry’s suicide? Who is responsible for Steve Deever’s incarceration? Who is responsible for the deaths of the twenty-one American pilots? Tracing these lines of responsibility leads to one character: Joe Keller.
The first character to hold Joe accountable is his son, Larry, even though the family and the audience don't learn this until the play’s end. Larry’s suicide is his way of convicting his father just as Steve is convicted. Joe shirks his own responsibility, at first by giving the order and refusing to come to the factory and then later by taking his own life rather than face prison. At the time of the crime, Joe convinced himself that the engines would never be installed. Later, he allowed his partner to take the blame. Joe lies to his wife and son, Chris, about his guilt, although neither fully believes him. Even when Joe admits what he has done, he makes excuses for himself and fails to take full responsibility. It’s not until he hears Chris read Larry’s letter aloud that Joe feels his own culpability. His suicide is his admission, finally, of guilt.
Losing Trust
At the beginning of the play, the audience meets three families whose backyards adjoin: the Kellers, the Baylisses, and the Lubeys. Each family appears relatively happy, enjoying a summer Sunday in their backyards, joking, reading newspapers, and sharing anecdotes. As Act One unfolds, however, it becomes clear that trust is eroding both within the families and among the neighbors. When Ann appears, she questions the status quo by wanting to marry Chris and by challenging Kate’s denial of Larry’s death. Ann has lost trust in her own father, Steve, and is losing trust in Joe. By Act Two, trust between Kate and Joe continues to crumble and Chris quickly loses trust in Joe and the American Dream he represents. Perhaps Chris has already lost trust in Joe, but now he is just beginning to realize it.
By Act Three, trust has completely crumbled into mistrust and finally distrust as the seemingly loving families devolve into chaos, rage, and destruction. Children don’t trust their parents, and parents don’t trust each other. The younger generation has lost trust in the world of war and materialism. Tragically, Chris, the former commander, has lost trust in his dream of marriage and family.
Parents as Role Models
When Miller chose All My Sons as the title for his play, he indicated one of the work’s major themes: the exploration of the relationships among parents and their children. Wartime had dislocated many families by removing fathers and sons, and soldiers such as Chris and Larry formed new connections with their comrades in arms, often leading to questions about their traditional family ties. The entire nation restructured its definitions of family after the war, and previously solid roles of domestic and family life would never be the same.
Family roles and loyalties splinter when the Kellers face their guilt and Chris faces his own blind loyalty to Joe. Likewise, the Deever family has been broken when both children, Ann and George, reject their father, Steve, in prison. Fathers are no longer protectors and providers. Instead, they become the source of shame and confusion. Even the role of the quintessential mother crumbles in the hands and heart of Kate Keller. A title that seems to signal patriarchy in Act One takes an ironic twist when Joe finally accepts the deaths of the pilots and admits, “Sure he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.”
Conclusion :-
At the end of All My Sons, Joe Keller faces the judgment of both his sons: one accusing him from the dead and one ready to drive him to prison. He goes inside and shoots himself.The major theme of ”All My Sons” is the tragic conflict between family loyalties and the social responsibility. Joe Keller is an ordinary fair-to medium individual whose love for his family is boundless.
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