"All My Sons" -Arthur Miller

All My Sons

   -Arthur Miller

                          

All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. It is his second play came after his first play The Man Who Had All the Luck. All My Sons based upon a true story which was capture by Miller here very beautifully.

The news story described how in 1941-43 the Wright Aeronautical Corporation based in Ohio had conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use. The story of defective engines had reached investigators working for Sen. Harry Truman’s congressional investigative board after several Wright aircraft assembly workers informed on the company; they would later testify under oath before Congress. In 1944, three Army Air force Officers were relieved and later convicted of neglect of duty.

Character List:

Joe Keller

Kate Keller

Chris Keller

Ann Deever

George Deever

Frank Lubey

Lydia Lubey

Jim Bayliss

Sue Bayliss

Bert

Unseen Characters:

Larry Keller

Steve Deever

About the Play:

The play is divided into three acts. Joe Keller is a protagonist of this play. Arthur Miller portrayed the central character as a type character. At the surface level he is a very ordinary man, decent, hard-working and charitable, a man no one could dislike. Joe is a self made businessman. He was doing business with his friend Steve Deever. He has very beautiful wife Kate Keller and two sons- Larry Keller and Chris Keller. Steve Deever, is in prison for selling cracked cylinder heads to the Air Force; causing the death of twenty one pilots in plane crashes. Due to this the family of Steve Deever destroyed especially his son and daughter, George and Ann Deever. In between the son of Keller is Larry missing. His mother is in worry about her missing son and because of Kate’s request, Frank is trying to figure out the horoscope of the Keller’s son Larry, who disappeared three years earlier.

Chris proposed Ann who was girlfriend of Larry Keller and he also wants to marry with her but because of the interruption of George. George insists his sister Ann will not marry Chris Keller, son of the man who destroyed the Deevers. Likewise the family of Keller and also Deever came to know that Geroge visited the prison to meet his father. The latter has confirmed that Joe told him to cover up the cracked cylinders and to send them out. Meanwhile, Frank announces his horoscope, implying that Larry is alive but later on Ann came with the latter is about the suicide letter by Larry. Meanwhile, Chris life also disturbed because of the offence of his father that’s what Chris think. The relationship of father-son becomes secondary. Further he dislikes himself with his father.

Additionally Joe himself guilt for his offence and he suffer from that. At the end he killed his life. At the end Chris regret to what he done but Kate insisted him that he was not responsible for his father’s death.

The reflection of the great Grecian tragedies:

All My Sons- the play based on the Grecian tragedies of the likes of Aeschulus, Sophocles and Euripides. In these play main character or the protagonist committed crime and due to that offence they must learn his fault and suffer as a result, and perhaps even die. In All My Sons the elements of Grecian tragedies are presented. Joe Keller first committed a crime and later on he suffering from a previous offence, and punishment for that offence. Likewise it explores the father-son relationship, also a common theme in Grecian tragedies. Ann Deever could also be seen to parallel a messenger as her letter is proof of Larry’s death.

Moreover this play is also considered as the influenced from the play of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, where Miler took the idea of two partners in a business where one is forced to take moral and legal responsibility for other. This is mirrored in All My Sons. He also borrowed the idea of a character’s idealism being the source of a problem. In a way we cannot blame the protagonist because whatever he done it is out of circumstances. He did whatever due to the responsibilities of his family. He wants to make him family well-settle. But in between his wrong work effect on other family and because of that they suffer a lot.

This play also takes into consideration as a failed idealism of American Dream. Arthur Miller later uses the everyman in a criticism of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which is in many ways similar to All My Sons.