All My Sons by Arthur Miller
Character List
Joe Keller
Middle
aged and prosperous, Joe Keller is a family man whose world does not extend
beyond the borders of his front yard or the gate around his factory. He is not
a greedy, conniving caricature of capitalism, but rather a good-natured and
loving man of little education, whose myopic perspective on his world stems
from a devotion to his family and an education in a society that encourages
generally antisocial behavior. American rugged individualism alienated Keller,
whose past misdeeds haunt the future of his family.
Kate Keller
(Mother)
Though
she has a successful husband and a loving son, Mother cannot abandon the memory
of her other son, who was lost in the war. Her delusions about Larry's
disappearance and her vehement self-denial are symptomatic of greater issues
than just a grief-stricken mother's inability to cope with the loss of a child.
Nervous and suspicious, Mother has taken on the burden of her husband's secret
while he presents the face of an untroubled conscience to the world, while she
suffers from headaches and nightmares. Her fantasies about Larry are
constructed from a sense of self-preservation, and the flimsy basis for her
hopes is threatened any time someone who loved Larry intimates that he or she
may not share Kate's confidence in his return.
Chris Keller
Returning
from the war as a hero, Chris found the day-to-day provincialism of his old
life stifling. But Chris is a family man, and he is devoted to his parents. He
is uncomfortable with the success his father's business found during the war,
when so many of his comrades died pointlessly. He redirects his discomfort into
an idealism and an attitude of social awareness that is foreign to his family
environment. Others perceive Chris's idealism as oppressive, asking sacrifices
of others that Chris himself does not make as he lives comfortably (if
guiltily) on his father's dime.
Larry Keller
Although
he has been dead for some years by the start of the play, Larry is as much a
character in the play as anyone who actually appears on stage. His
disappearance haunts his family through his mother's superstitious belief in
his return, as well as through his brother's wary but measured rejection of
Larry's claim on his childhood sweetheart. Larry is constantly compared to
Chris throughout the play, ostensibly for the purpose of better defining the
character of Chris, but in the end we learn that Larry's own character had
quite an effect on the story. Larry is portrayed by his father as the more
sensible and practical of his sons, the one with a head for business who would
understand his father's arguments. Larry, not Chris, possessed the stronger sense
of honor and connectedness, and Larry sacrificed himself in penance for his
father's misdeeds. 
Ann Deever
The
beautiful Ann has not become attached to a new man since her beau Larry died in
the war, but this is not through lack of suitors. Ann is mired in the past,
though she has not been waiting for Larry to return. Rather, she has waited for
his brother Chris to step forward and take Larry's place in her heart. She is
an honest, down-to-earth girl, and she is emboldened by the strength of certain
of her convictions. Sharing Chris's idealism and righteousness, she has shunned
her father for his crimes during the war, and she fully understands his
assertion that if he had any suspicions of his own father, he could not live
with himself. Ann and her brother work to establish "appropriate"
reactions to a father's wartime racketeering.
George Deever
George
serves a mostly functional role in the story of the Keller family. His arrival
in the second act is a catalyst for a situation that was on edge from long-established
tensions. His disdain is for the crime, not for the man, and now that he has
been newly convinced of his father's innocence, he is here to rescue his sister
from entering the family of the man he believes is actually guilty. Yet George
is easily disarmed by Keller's good humor, and his own convictions about his
father's innocence are almost undermined by his awareness of his father's other
faults and weaknesses.
Dr. Jim
Bayliss
The
neighborhood doctor, Jim is a good man who believes in the duty of one man to
help another, but he at the same time acknowledges a man's responsibility to
his family. He is interested in medicine not for the money but to help people.
This point is dramatized by his reluctance to bother with a hypochondriac. He
once left his wife to do medical research, but he eventually went home, putting
his responsibility to his family ahead of his responsibility to the world.
Sue Bayliss
Jim's
wife Sue put her husband through medical school, and she expects more than
gratitude in return. She blames Chris's infectious, insinuating idealism for
her husband's interest in the fiscally unrewarding field of medical research.
Frank Lubey
A
simple neighbor, Frank has an interest in astrology. Mother asked him before
the start of the play to prepare a horoscope for Larry in order to determine
his "favorable day."
Lydia Lubey
Now
married to Frank, Lydia is a former sweetheart of George's, but she did not
wait for him to return from the war. Seeing Lydia makes George wistful about
the simpler life he could have had, if he had not left home for the greater
world of New York.
Bert
Bert
is a neighborhood boy who plays cop-and-robber games with Joe Keller, to
Mother's chagrin. Keller has allowed Bert and the other children to get the
story of his jail time wrong and to believe that he is a chief of police with a
jail in his basement. Mother is made very anxious by these games.
Major Themes
Relatedness
Arthur
Miller stated that the issue of relatedness is the main one in All My Sons.
The play introduces questions that involve an individual's obligation to
society, personal responsibility, and the distinction between private and
public matters. Keller can live with his actions during the war because he sees
himself as answerable only to himself and his family, not to society as a
whole. Miller criticizes Keller's myopic worldview, which allows him to
discount his crimes because they were done "for the family." The
principal contention is that Keller is wrong in his claim that there is nothing
greater than the family, since there is a whole world to which Keller is
connected. To cut yourself off from your relationships with society at large is
to invite tragedy of a nature both public (regarding the pilots) and private
(regarding the suicides).
The Nuclear
Family
The
reverse side of Miller's relatedness argument is his downplaying of the family
as the nucleus of society. Somehow people are to feel a more general caring for
others that is not drawn off by family obligations. What, then, is the place of
the family in the larger social system? Discussions of the family serve mostly
to contrast characters' opinions about an individual's responsibilities to the
family versus society at large. The family is also presented as a unit that can
be corrupted and damaged by the actions and denials of its individuals, a
small-scale example of the way individual actions can corrupt society.
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. Whilte the
revelations are unavoidable, so are their fatal consequences.
Denial and
Self-Deception
How
do we deceive ourselves and others? We select things to focus on in life, but
do we also need to deny certain things in order to live well? What toll does
denial take on the psyche, the family, and society? Two main facts about the
Keller family history must be confronted. One is Larry's death, and the other
is Keller's responsibility for the shipment of defective parts. Mother denies
the first while accepting the second, and Keller accepts the first while denying
the second. The result is that both characters live in a state of
self-deception, willfully ignoring one of the truths so that the family can
continue to function in acceptable ways.
Idealism
Chris
is described by other characters as an idealist, although we do not see this
trait in action aside from his angry response to the wartime profiteering. Yet
the others define him by his idealism, setting him apart as a man of scruples.
Chris decides that he must abandon these scruples to the cause of practicality
when he is faced with the prospect of sending his father to jail. Is idealism
sustainable in a fallen, complex world? If ideals must be sacrificed, is there
any supervening ideal or principle to help us decide which ideals should be
sacrificed in which circumstances?
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?
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.
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--does he sacrifice Steve or
Larry? Miller suggests the flaws of a capitalist who has no grounding in
cultural or social morals. While Keller accepted the idea that a good
businessman like himself should patch over the flawed shipment, 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. Economic mobility alone can be
detrimental--consider George's abandonment of his hometown for big city
success. There is a rift in the Bayliss marriage over Dr. Bayliss's desire to
do unprofitable research, because his wife wants him to make more money instead
of do what he enjoys and what will help others. a
All My
Sons Summary
How It All Goes Down
Joe Keller, a successful businessman, lives
comfortably with his wife, Kate, and son, Chris, in a suburban American
neighborhood. They have only one sadness in their lives – the loss of their
other son, Larry, who went missing in World War II. After
three years, Kate still clings to the hope that her son is alive. Chris would
like her to give up that hope because he wants to marry Ann, an old neighbor
and Larry's former fiancée.
Ann arrives. Kate, sensing the reason for her
visit, gets a little touchy. We learn that Ann's father is in prison for a
crime he committed while working in Joe's factory. Faced with a batch of
defective machine parts, he patched them and sent them out, causing the death
of 21 pilots during the war. Turns out that Joe was also accused of this crime
and convicted, but he was exonerated (set free) during the appeal. Steve went
to prison; Joe returned home and made his business bigger and better.
Soon after Ann's arrival, her brother George
follows, straight from visiting his father in prison. He knows what Chris has
in mind and is totally against him marrying Ann. Joe and Kate do their best to
charm George into submission, but finally it's Ann who sends him away. She
wants to marry Chris no matter what.
The marriage of Chris and Ann is becoming a reality
– and Kate can't handle it, because it means Larry is truly dead. And if Larry
is dead, she tells Chris, it's because his own father killed him, since Larry was
also a pilot. Chris finally confronts his father's guilt in shipping those
defective parts.
But Chris won't do anything about it. He won't even
ask his father to go to prison. Ann, who turned her back on her own father for
the same reason, insists that Chris take a hard line. Joe Keller goes inside to
get his things. A gunshot is heard. He's killed himself.
All My Sons Act 1 Summary
·
The stage directions describe the Keller
home as situated in an American suburb. It's roughly August 1947.
·
The house is comfortable and well-kept,
as is the yard. Downstage left stands an apple tree stump. The trunk and
branches are toppled beside it.
·
Joe Keller is in his yard reading the
want ads. He's a self-made businessman of about sixty. Doctor Jim Bayliss, his
neighbor, is about forty. He's reading the paper too.
·
Joe's neighbor on the other side, Frank,
enters. He's 32.
·
The neighbors chat about the weather and
the want ads.
·
Frank notices the felled tree. It was
struck by lightning in the night. He observes how strange it is that the tree
planted in memory of Larry was struck down in his birth month. Larry is Joe's
son. He would have been twenty-seven this August, which Frank remembers because
he's working on Larry's horoscope.
·
What Frank is trying to figure out – at
the request of Kate, Joe's wife – is whether the day on which Larry was
reported missing was his "favorable day," when, astrologically
speaking, odds are he wouldn't die.
·
This piques skeptical Jim's interest –
he doesn't buy it.
·
Talk turns to Annie, a young woman who
used to live next door. She's visiting the Kellers and is upstairs asleep for
now.
·
Jim makes a quip about how the block
could use a pretty face. Just then his fat wife enters, nagging him about a
patient's phone call.
·
Frank's wife Lydia comes in, also
curious about Annie. Is she engaged? She was Larry's betrothed.
·
Chris Keller enters. He's 32. He starts
reading the book section.
·
Joe and Chris start to talk about
Larry's tree when eight-year-old neighbor Bert enters. He's Joe's
"deputy" and tattles on some of the other kids on the street. He asks
to see the jail Joe keeps in his basement, but Joe won't let him.
·
Bert exits; talk turns back to the tree.
Mom saw it last night, says Chris. She was outside when it broke, then she came
in and cried.
·
Kate Keller still believes Larry is
coming back, even though it's been three years. Chris thinks they should
puncture the illusion; Joe wants to keep it intact.
·
Chris sits his dad down. Listen up, pop,
he says – I'm going to propose to Annie. But Mom still thinks she's Larry's
girl.
·
Chris threatens to leave town – and the
family business – if his father doesn't encourage his mother to support this
marriage. Joe is shocked.
·
Kate enters, a woman in her early
fifties. She's happy the tree blew down, because it affirms for her that Larry
is still alive. They were in a rush to memorialize him with that tree.
·
Kate and Chris tiptoe around a
discussion of Annie. Kate doesn't want to acknowledge that Chris might be
courting her.
·
Kate recalls a dream she had about Larry
last night. When she heard the wind, she imagined it was Larry flying by in his
fighter plane.
·
Kate turns to Joe and wags her finger at
him: they shouldn't have planted that tree. They gave up too soon.
·
When Chris exits to get his mother an
aspirin, she turns on Joe. Chris better not be planning to propose to Annie.
Joe says he doesn't know anything more than she does – an outright lie.
·
Kate wants Joe to believe with her that
Larry will come back. He asks her to calm down.
·
They're again interrupted by Bert, who
brings up the jail. Kate reacts sharply, telling him there is no jail there.
·
Ann enters from the house. She's
beautiful and beautifully dressed. She's been living in New York.
·
When Chris shows his admiration for Ann,
Kate comments lightly that she has put on a little weight.
·
Ann remarks on the little changes in the
neighborhood: trees, a missing hammock. She's introduced to Jim, who now lives
in her old house.
·
When Ann mentions Larry, Kate is
relieved. Eventually she asks Ann directly if she's waiting for Larry. Ann says
no.
·
Frank enters and dispels the tension. A
little small talk, and then Frank mentions Ann's father. He's in prison.
·
Ann is sensitive; she wants to know if
the neighbors still talk about her father and his crime. Chris and Joe say no.
Ann remembers the neighbors screaming "Murderers" at her father,
Steve, and at Joe.
·
In a long monologue, Joe recalls the day
he was cleared of the crime. He and Steve had been accused of selling cracked
cylinder heads to the Air Force, causing twenty-one planes to crash. Joe was
exonerated; Ann's father was imprisoned. When Joe returned home, he walked down
the street with defiance and pride. He suggests the same for Steve when he's
released.
·
Ann admits that neither she nor her
brother keep in touch with their father anymore. They blame him for knowingly
shipping out faulty parts, resulting in the death of so many American pilots.
She wonders aloud whether this was responsible for Larry's death.
·
That really sets Kate off. Ann should
never say that again.
·
Keller tells his version of the story.
There was a mad rush for parts, and when the cylinders came out cracked,
cowardly Steve just decided to send them out. He was afraid that Joe and the
military would be displeased with the mistake, so he kept quiet about it.
·
Chris breaks in. He just wants a change
of subject. So they talk about steak and champagne instead, and Keller exits.
·
The long-awaited proposal occurs. Chris
asks; Ann says yes. Now they just have to figure out how to tell Kate.
·
Chris has something to get off his
chest. It's about the war. Leading a company, he lost all his men. Then he
returned to the States and felt that nobody noticed; that the sacrifice of the
men who died meant nothing substantial to the people at home. He has survivor's
guilt. Chris feels as though he doesn't deserve life and doesn't deserve her.
·
Ann sets him straight – he does deserve
her. And he better kiss her right now.
·
Joe interrupts them. There's a phone
call from George, Ann's brother.
·
Chris tells Joe the news of his
engagement to Ann. But Joe is preoccupied with this phone call. He's afraid
George will want to open up his father's case again, and that Ann is on his
side.
·
Ann emerges. George is coming there to
settle something. He wouldn't say what.
·
This rattles Joe and Kate. Kate tells
Joe to be smart.
All My
Sons Act 1 Summary
·
The stage directions describe the Keller home as
situated in an American suburb. It's roughly August 1947.
·
The house is comfortable and well-kept, as is the
yard. Downstage left stands an apple tree stump. The trunk and branches are
toppled beside it.
·
Joe Keller is in his yard reading the want ads.
He's a self-made businessman of about sixty. Doctor Jim Bayliss, his neighbor,
is about forty. He's reading the paper too.
·
Joe's neighbor on the other side, Frank, enters.
He's 32.
·
The neighbors chat about the weather and the want
ads.
·
Frank notices the felled tree. It was struck by
lightning in the night. He observes how strange it is that the tree planted in
memory of Larry was struck down in his birth month. Larry is Joe's son. He
would have been twenty-seven this August, which Frank remembers because he's
working on Larry's horoscope.
·
What Frank is trying to figure out – at the request
of Kate, Joe's wife – is whether the day on which Larry was reported missing
was his "favorable day," when, astrologically speaking, odds are he
wouldn't die.
·
This piques skeptical Jim's interest – he doesn't
buy it.
·
Talk turns to Annie, a young woman who used to live
next door. She's visiting the Kellers and is upstairs asleep for now.
·
Jim makes a quip about how the block could use a
pretty face. Just then his fat wife enters, nagging him about a patient's phone
call.
·
Frank's wife Lydia comes in, also curious about
Annie. Is she engaged? She was Larry's betrothed.
·
Chris Keller enters. He's 32. He starts reading the
book section.
·
Joe and Chris start to talk about Larry's tree when
eight-year-old neighbor Bert enters. He's Joe's "deputy" and tattles
on some of the other kids on the street. He asks to see the jail Joe keeps in his
basement, but Joe won't let him.
·
Bert exits; talk turns back to the tree. Mom saw it
last night, says Chris. She was outside when it broke, then she came in and
cried.
·
Kate Keller still believes Larry is coming back,
even though it's been three years. Chris thinks they should puncture the
illusion; Joe wants to keep it intact.
·
Chris sits his dad down. Listen up, pop, he says –
I'm going to propose to Annie. But Mom still thinks she's Larry's girl.
·
Chris threatens to leave town – and the family
business – if his father doesn't encourage his mother to support this marriage.
Joe is shocked.
·
Kate enters, a woman in her early fifties. She's
happy the tree blew down, because it affirms for her that Larry is still alive.
They were in a rush to memorialize him with that tree.
·
Kate and Chris tiptoe around a discussion of Annie.
Kate doesn't want to acknowledge that Chris might be courting her.
·
Kate recalls a dream she had about Larry last
night. When she heard the wind, she imagined it was Larry flying by in his fighter
plane.
·
Kate turns to Joe and wags her finger at him: they
shouldn't have planted that tree. They gave up too soon.
·
When Chris exits to get his mother an aspirin, she
turns on Joe. Chris better not be planning to propose to Annie. Joe says he
doesn't know anything more than she does – an outright lie.
·
Kate wants Joe to believe with her that Larry will
come back. He asks her to calm down.
·
They're again interrupted by Bert, who brings up
the jail. Kate reacts sharply, telling him there is no jail there.
·
Ann enters from the house. She's beautiful and
beautifully dressed. She's been living in New York.
·
When Chris shows his admiration for Ann, Kate
comments lightly that she has put on a little weight.
·
Ann remarks on the little changes in the
neighborhood: trees, a missing hammock. She's introduced to Jim, who now lives
in her old house.
·
When Ann mentions Larry, Kate is relieved.
Eventually she asks Ann directly if she's waiting for Larry. Ann says no.
·
Frank enters and dispels the tension. A little
small talk, and then Frank mentions Ann's father. He's in prison.
·
Ann is sensitive; she wants to know if the
neighbors still talk about her father and his crime. Chris and Joe say no. Ann
remembers the neighbors screaming "Murderers" at her father, Steve,
and at Joe.
·
In a long monologue, Joe recalls the day he was
cleared of the crime. He and Steve had been accused of selling cracked cylinder
heads to the Air Force, causing twenty-one planes to crash. Joe was exonerated;
Ann's father was imprisoned. When Joe returned home, he walked down the street
with defiance and pride. He suggests the same for Steve when he's released.
·
Ann admits that neither she nor her brother keep in
touch with their father anymore. They blame him for knowingly shipping out
faulty parts, resulting in the death of so many American pilots. She wonders
aloud whether this was responsible for Larry's death.
·
That really sets Kate off. Ann should never say
that again.
·
Keller tells his version of the story. There was a
mad rush for parts, and when the cylinders came out cracked, cowardly Steve
just decided to send them out. He was afraid that Joe and the military would be
displeased with the mistake, so he kept quiet about it.
·
Chris breaks in. He just wants a change of subject.
So they talk about steak and champagne instead, and Keller exits.
·
The long-awaited proposal occurs. Chris asks; Ann
says yes. Now they just have to figure out how to tell Kate.
·
Chris has something to get off his chest. It's
about the war. Leading a company, he lost all his men. Then he returned to the
States and felt that nobody noticed; that the sacrifice of the men who died
meant nothing substantial to the people at home. He has survivor's guilt. Chris
feels as though he doesn't deserve life and doesn't deserve her.
·
Ann sets him straight – he does deserve her. And he
better kiss her right now.
·
Joe interrupts them. There's a phone call from
George, Ann's brother.
·
Chris tells Joe the news of his engagement to Ann.
But Joe is preoccupied with this phone call. He's afraid George will want to
open up his father's case again, and that Ann is on his side.
·
Ann emerges. George is coming there to settle
something. He wouldn't say what.
·
This rattles Joe and Kate. Kate tells Joe to be
smart.
·
Joe can't believe this. His family wanted money and
so he made money. Now they are turning on him.
Act I
All My Sons
takes place in a small American town in August, a few years after World War II.
The events of the play occur on a single set, the back yard of the Keller home,
where a tree has recently been torn down by a storm. The Kellers are solidly
middle-class and have a working-class background. They are not rich, but they
are financially comfortable, and there is a sense throughout the play that they
worked hard to reach this state of stability.
At curtain rise,
Joe
Keller and Dr.
Jim Bayliss are in the yard. Keller is a middle-aged father,
uneducated but sensible and generally unexceptional. Jim, the local doctor, is
making small talk with his neighbor. After some talk about the weather, another
neighbor enters. Frank
Lubey is younger, pleasant, and profoundly superstitious.
Keller is
reading the want ads in the Sunday paper, and he is quietly impressed by all
the different types of business there are nowadays. Frank notices the broken
tree, and Keller replies sadly that it fell the previous night. His wife has
not yet seen it. Frank refers obliquely to the fact that the tree was planted
in memory of Keller's son Larry, who would have turned 27 this month. Frank
knows Larry's birthday because he has been preparing a horoscope for Larry at
the request of Keller's wife Kate (referred to in the stage directions as
"Mother" throughout). She wishes to know if November 25th, the day on
which Larry went missing in the war, was a favorable day for her son. According
to those who believe in these things (that is, Frank and Kate, but not Keller),
it would have been fairly impossible for Larry to die on a favorable day.
Keller mentions
that a girl named Annie is upstairs sleeping, and the mention of her makes Jim
and Frank excited. Jim is new to the neighborhood, so he has never met Annie,
and Frank is eager to see an old acquaintance. Sue
Bayliss, Jim's wife, stops by to tell Jim that a patient is on the
phone. Jim implies that the patient in question is a hypochondriac, and Sue
suggests that he should be happy to take his doctor's fee whether the patient
is really sick or not. Sue mentions that Annie should stop by later to see what
they have done to the house she used to live in, and they exit.
Lydia
Lubey, Frank's wife, enters to complain of a broken toaster, and
then Frank exits. Lydia lingers for a moment to ask if Annie is still unmarried
(she is). Lydia finds that hard to believe, and Keller replies bitterly that it
is because of the war that Annie is single and that he has one son instead of
two. She exits.
Chris
Keller enters. He is an affectionate young man of 32, who clearly
adores his father. They wonder what Mother will say about the broken tree. A
little boy named Bert
runs in. He and Keller have an extended make-believe game in which Keller is
the police inspector and Bert has been deputized to arrest other children in
the town. After being told that there is a jail in the basement of the house,
Bert leaves to continue his patrol.
Chris and Keller
resume conversation about the tree. Early that morning, during the storm, Chris
saw his mother standing outside beside the tree when it cracked. She had been
crying very hard and wandering around at night, like she did shortly after Larry
died. Although Larry has been missing for several years, Mother still thinks
that he is alive somewhere. Chris thinks it is dishonest that he and Keller
allow her to hold onto this dream, while they themselves are rather certain
that Larry is long dead. Keller is resistant to making this fact final,
however, because they cannot prove that their son is dead, at least not to his
wife, without a body or a grave.
Chris sits him
down and says that he asked Annie to visit because he is going to propose to
her. Keller is lukewarm about the idea, because Annie was Larry's girl. From
Mother's perspective, Larry is not dead, so Annie is not available to Chris.
But Chris insists that there is no other girl for him, even though they have
not seen each other since the war. He declares an ultimatum: if his parents
will not accept his marriage to Annie, then he and Annie will just get married
and move elsewhere. Keller is shocked that Chris would leave behind the family
business.
Mother appears.
She is somewhat younger than her husband, and she is very loving. She says that
it is funny that Larry's tree blew down in his birthday month, and this shows
that he is coming back. Uncomfortable, Chris tries to change the subject and
talk about how good Annie looks. Mother says that she loves Annie because she
did not run off with another man as soon as her beau was declared missing.
Mother has a headache, perhaps from a bad dream in which she saw Larry reaching
to her from the cockpit of his plane. She sees this as more evidence that they
had been hasty in putting a memorial tree up for him.
Chris says that
maybe they should be trying to forget Larry, and Mother is furious. Chris exits
to get her some aspirin, and Mother asks Keller if Chris intends to propose to
Annie. He answers noncommittally. Mother says that if Annie is still single,
that means that she has been waiting for Larry, and they dare not take her
faith away. Mother gets somewhat hysterical, claiming that if Larry is not
coming back, then she will kill herself. She says that Keller in particular
should still believe--but Keller does not understand why he in particular
should believe. Bert reappears, but Mother shoos him away, saying that they
must end that jail business.
Ann and Chris
enter. She is beautiful and strong-willed. Their entrance cuts short the
argument. Jim and Sue briefly enter and are introduced to Ann. Before she
leaves, Sue tells Ann that she should never, not even in her mind, count her
husband's money. Ann and the Kellers discuss their plans for the evening, and
Mother mentions that the room Ann is staying in was Larry's room. She is
shocked, because the closet is full of clothes and the shoes are shined. There
is an awkward moment, and Mother pulls Ann aside to gossip. Ann says that her
parents are not getting divorced. Mother asks if Ann goes out much, and Ann
knows that she is really asking if she is still waiting for Larry. She says
that she is not. Mother insists that deep in her heart she must think he is
still alive. Ann asks why Mother still believes, and Mother says it is because
"certain things can never be," not in a world with a God.
Act II
The second act
takes place later the same day. Mother tells Chris that she fears that George
is coming to open up the case again. Mother leaves, and Ann tells Chris that
they ought to tell her about the engagement soon. Chris leaves, and Ann gossips
with the neighbor Sue for awhile. Sue complains that her husband resents her
for having put him through medical school, saying that "you can never owe
somebody without resenting them." Sue says that Jim wants to do medical
research and that Chris is the one who put idealistic thoughts of helping the
world into her husband's head. She thinks that Chris makes other men feel
guilty about their lives, while Chris lives on his father's business--she
implies that this is not clean money.
Chris enters,
and Sue speaks cordially to him, then leaves. Ann tells Chris that Sue hates
him and says that everyone thinks Keller is guilty. Chris says that there is no
suspicion in his mind whatsoever, asking if she thought he could possibly
forgive his father if he had been guilty. Keller enters, and they
lightheartedly banter about his lack of education. Keller says that everybody
is getting so educated that there will be no one left to take away the garbage.
"It's gettin' so the only dumb ones left are the bosses ... you stand on
the street today and spit, you're gonna hit a college man." Keller changes
the subject and offers to give Ann's father a job when he gets out of jail, ostensibly
so that he will not freeload on the newlyweds. Keller takes it as a personal
insult when Ann implies that she would never have anything to do with Steve,
father or not. Keller leaves.
Jim announces
that George is about to enter, and he warns Chris that George has blood in his
eye--he should not fight this out in front of his mother. George enters, and
there is some cordial but strained small talk for awhile. Eventually, George
cuts to the chase and tells Ann that she is not going to marry Chris, because
his father ruined her family. George explains that he went to the jail to tell
their father that Ann was getting married, and he discovered that they had been
wrong all along. They did a terrible thing in cutting their father out of their
lives. Steve had been alone at work when the cracked cylinder heads came in, so
he called Keller. Keller told him to weld the cracks and send the parts on to
the army, but Steve was afraid to do it alone. Keller claimed that he had the
flu and could not go into work. This excuse made it possible for him later to
deny any involvement in the shipment. Chris says he heard all this before in
court, but George says it was different hearing it directly from his father, a
"frightened mouse" of a man who would never do such a thing on his
own volition. Chris counters that he certainly would, and because he was such a
frightened mouse he would throw the blame on someone else because he was not
man enough to take the heat. George accuses Chris, saying that he must know the
family secret, and that this is why his name is not on the business. Chris
warns him not to start a fight.
Mother enters;
there is a general pause. She gushes over George for a while, and he responds
kindly, since they have always gotten along. Lydia stops by (she and George
were old sweethearts), and it saddens him to see her. Everyone is happy and
friendly until Keller enters. George says that his father is not doing well,
and Keller is sympathetic. George tries to be hostile, but he keeps getting
disarmed by Keller's friendliness. Keller says he is sad to hear that Steve is
still angry at him and that Steve never knew how to take the blame. He rattles
off a list of incidents in which Steve tried to blame others to save face.
George knows that this is true, and his anger is diffused. He decides to stay
for dinner after all, and he comments that everything looks the same and
everyone looks well.
Mother responds
proudly that her husband has not been sick for fifteen years. Keller hastily
adds the exception of his flu during the war. Mother takes a moment before she
realizes what he is talking about, and George notices the awkwardness. His
suspicion is reawakened.
Frank enters and
announces that he has finished Larry's horoscope. The day he disappeared was
his favorable day, so Larry probably could not have been killed on that day.
Mother insists that Larry is alive, and she says that she has packed Ann's bag
and it is time for her to go. George keeps insisting on returning to Mother's
slip-up on the matter of Keller's flu during the war, and George tries to get
Ann to leave with him. She says she will not leave till Chris tells her to, and
Chris throws George out. Ann runs after him, after all, to try to calm him
down.
The Kellers are
left alone. Chris yells at his mother for packing Ann's bag, but she replies
that everybody has to wait for Larry to come home. She is very insistent on
this point. Chris says that he has let Larry go a long time ago. Mother cries
that Larry is alive, because if he is dead, then Keller killed him. "As
long as you live, that boy is alive. God does not let a son be killed by his
father." She runs out.
Chris turns to
Keller, finally understanding. Keller does not deny it; he ordered those
cracked cylinder heads to be shipped out. Yet, they did not go into the type of
plane that Larry flew. Chris says that Keller killed twenty-one men, and Chris
then calls him a murderer. Keller explains that it was a matter of business:
you work forty years, and in one moment, one failed shipment, the contracts can
be torn up and you can lose everything. He thought that the military would
notice the cracks anyway and that if they did not, he would warn them. But it
was too late--the news was all over the papers that the planes had crashed, and
the police were knocking on the door.
Chris is
flabbergasted that his father suspected the planes would crash. Furious and
betrayed, he asks why his father would do such a thing. For him, his father
replies--for Chris, for the family, for the business. Enraged, Chris rants
about his father's small-mindedness, in particular his lack of empathy with his
countrymen and the human race. "No animal kills his own, what are you?
What must I do to you?" He stumbles away, weeping, as his broken father
cries out to him.
Analysis
Much of Miller's
drama focuses on the unexceptional man. His Death of a Salesman
is a fanfare for the common man, putting the dreary plights and small ambitions
of the lower middle class into the anti-hero of Willy Loman. Miller finds high
drama in the life of a man so common that he could be anyone in the audience,
and that is why Death of a Salesman continues to resound so strongly with
audiences, especially men of a certain age. Likewise, in The Crucible
Miller takes commonplace people and puts them in the extraordinary situation of
the Salem witch trials. The drama of the everyman is a trope throughout
Miller's oeuvre, and it begins to surface as well in All My Sons,
his first prominent play. The theme is first made apparent when Keller tries to
justify Steve's actions during the war. He calls Steve a "little
man," who buckled under pressure from the military when a shipment of
cracked cylinder heads came through his inspection. Keller draws a distinction
between men who are easily pressured and are natural followers (Steve) and men
who can stand up for themselves and make the difficult choice in a bad
situation (himself). The irony, of course, is that he is defending Steve a
little too vehemently, because only he and his wife know that Keller actually
belongs in the former category of the common follower. Keller may talk big, but
we learn at the end of the second act that when the military was on the phone
and he had to make a decision, Keller was the one who caved in to circumstance.
The little man whom the hero patronizingly defends at the beginning of the play
turns out to be rather like the hero himself.
Despite Keller's
insistence that he was thinking of his family in the choice, it seems more
likely that his first thought was on keeping his business. This emphasis, if
true, reflects poorly not just on Keller but on the profit orientation of the
capitalism within which he acts. Wartime racketeering and the merciless pursuit
of business profit to the exclusion of human decency are, in Miller's
worldview, part and parcel of the American capitalist system. Miller's leftist
sympathies are no secret; the witch hunts of The Crucible are a thinly veiled
allegory of the show trials of the McCarthy era, and Death of a Salesman is a
virulent attack on a society that uses a man up during his working years and
then leaves him out to dry when he is no longer useful. All My Sons was first
produced before Miller's fame gave him the ability to launch more direct
assaults on the ways that the profit-seeking elements of capitalism can tend to
destroy American social structure, but the implicit critique is still salient
here. Keller is not presented as a villain but as an ordinary man caught up in
a bad situation and who makes a choice according to his own values. Indeed, if
Keller really was thinking of his family, it would have been hard for him, in the
Weberian, steel-hard shell of capitalist culture, to make a different choice.
He might have lost the business and landed his family in poverty after all.
Through Chris, nevertheless, Miller challenges Keller's individual or family
values as misguided, ignorant, and destructive in relation to the larger social
and cultural values he could have been paying attention to.
Even so,
everyone intends to act in view of what one thinks is the good. Like Willy
Loman, Keller is a tragic antihero, a relic from a simpler time before higher
education and professionalization were widespread, when the nuclear family was
truly the nucleus of a man's world and his community did not seem to extend to
the whole world. Keller sees himself and his business as just one small cog in
the American war machine, which is part of a world far beyond himself and his
real influence. What he does not understand is that the actions of this small
cog do have implications far wider than what he can see with his own eyes. He
is answerable not to his family, but to his society. The issue is how to
balance the competing claims of self, family, and society. Is it really
acceptable to cause twenty-one people to die? His society thinks not, which is
why Keller's associate was put in jail.
Moreover, Keller
prefers to see himself as a victim of others. Instead of dealing with his
complicity in a scandal that sent pilots to their deaths, Keller denies his
involvement and passes off the blame, protecting his self-image and preserving
the illusion that he has legitimately maintained his rightful place in society.
When George opens up the old accusations, Keller is ready for him with a list
of incidents in which George's father endangered the business. He is blind to
the impulses within himself that make him just as dangerous as his meek and
unassuming former partner, preferring to think of himself as a man among men,
minding his own business (literally and figuratively). That is the true flaw in
Keller's character; though he may not be fully faulted for imprecisely
calibrating the complex values involved in his life, he denies the
responsibility that he knows he should own up to. His denial, which keeps him
out of jail, is paradoxically what ends up eating through his family's
tranquility and locking him in his own self-imprisonment of shame and
deception. And when the truth is finally revealed, at first through his wife's
slip of the tongue, Keller tries to mitigate his guilt by portraying himself as
the victim once more, dealing with forces outside his control.
Whereas before
he belittled Steve for caving under the pressure, now he claims that the very
same actions were the only sensible, businesslike things to do. He rationalizes
that he was just serving the principles of good business, and that he thought
the parts would hold up just fine in the air. But when Chris forces him to
admit that he had his doubts about the planes' safety, he again justifies his
decision by claiming that he was just one of thousands of men on the wartime
profiteering bandwagon. "Who worked for nothin' in that war?" he
asks. Yet his denials and deflections of blame, rather than assuaging his son,
lead to Chris's complete disillusionment in the moral fiber of his father. (See
Centola, 1997, on this topic.)
The dialogue in the
second act varies between long, explanatory speeches, and fast exchanges
characterized by extensive questioning. As the tension mounts, the questions
grow shorter and more rapid-fire, increasing the pressure on Keller line by
line. At the climax, the staccato dialogue heightens the drama of the
courtroom-like confrontation between father and son. The stage directions
indicate that "their movements now are those of subtle pursuit and
escape." Where first Chris was asking questions about what happened and
Keller was explaining, now Chris is hurling accusations and Keller is answering
in defensive questions: "Dad, you killed twenty-one men!" "What,
killed?" They are replaying the ancient dance of the archetypal father-son
conflict. The act finishes with Chris's speech, building through eight
questions, until he asks finally, "Don't you live in the world?" He
then pulls back from that peak by redirecting the last question to himself,
confessing that he does not know what to do. A son may find his father guilty,
but how can he punish him? (See Griffin, 1996.)
Act III
It is now the
middle of the night. Mother is outside on a rocking chair, waiting for Chris to
come home. Jim appears and asks about the fight. He knows the truth about
Keller and Steve--he figured it out a long time ago. Mother says she thought
that Chris sort of knew, as well, and she did not realize it would be such a
shock to him. Jim says that Chris would never know how to live with a thing
like that. But he will come back, because every man has to compromise his
ideals sometime. Chris probably just wanted to be alone to watch "the star
of his honesty" go out. Jim points out that he returned to his wife after
having left her to do medical research, because he is a good husband; likewise,
Chris will return because he is a good son. Jim leaves.
Keller enters.
Mother tells him that when Chris returns, Keller will have to explain himself,
making sure that Chris knows that Keller understands the gravity of his
offense. That is, she wants Keller to offer to go to prison, should Chris ask
him to. Keller does not like this plan, because he thinks he made the choice
for the sake of his wife and son. Furthermore, he spoiled them rather than
making them earn their keep. Mother says that these points do not excuse his
crime. Keller insists that nothing is greater than the family, but there is
something still greater in Chris's mind. Keller says starkly that Chris will
forgive him, because "I'm his father and he's my son, and if there's something
bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head." Keller says that Larry
would have understood; Larry had a head for business.
Ann enters and
presents a plan to the Kellers. They have made Chris feel guilty for loving
her, so she insists that Mother tell Chris that Larry is dead and she knows it,
so that they can go away and be happy. "You had two sons. But you've only
got one now," she says. But Mother refuses, because she knows in her heart
that Larry is alive, and she knows that Chris and Ann must feel the same in
their hearts. Ann says that she knows that Larry is dead. "Would I have
looked at anyone else if I wasn't sure?" she asks rhetorically. Mother
senses that there is something Ann is not saying.
Ann removes a
letter from her pocket. It is a letter from Larry, which she never intended to
show anyone unless it was necessary to allow her and Chris to get married. He
wrote it right before he disappeared. As Mother reads the letter, she begins to
moan, and Ann insists that the circumstances forced her to show the letter,
since Mother would not believe Ann's word.
Chris returns
and says that he will leave town because he cannot bear to be around his father
with the knowledge he now has. He could jail him if he were human any more, but
"I'm like everybody else now. You made me practical." Ann says she
will go with him, but he says no, because in her heart she will always be
asking him to send his father to jail. She says he should do what he has to do,
but he cannot find a reason to make Keller suffer; after all, putting him
behind bars will not raise the dead.
Keller returns
and Chris walks away, saying that he has nothing to say to him. Keller asks
what is bothering Chris--too much money? Then give it to charity. Chris can do
what he wants with it; the money is his. Chris responds that the issue is what
Keller wants to do. Keller rejoins that Chris cannot tell him to go to jail,
because Keller clearly does not belong there. Besides, no one worked for free
during the war. Wartime is profit time, and if he has to go to jail then half
the country has to go with him. Chris understands but had thought Keller was
better than the average, being his father. Chris feels unable to look at Keller
or himself.
Ann gives Chris
the letter, though Mother tries to stop him, or at least stop him from telling
Keller what is in the letter. But Chris reads the letter aloud. Larry's letter
is from the day he died. He had just seen the papers and heard about his father
and the planes crashing. Larry felt full of guilt and anger, and wrote that he
could not face anybody. He wrote that he was about to go out on a mission and
that he would be reported missing. The letter implies suicide. Larry's letter
to Ann adds that he loves her but that she must not wait for him.
Keller is quiet.
He understands. He calls for the car and is ready to go upstairs to get a
jacket. Mother tries to stop him, saying that Larry would not have sent him to
jail. But Keller says that this is exactly what Larry is saying in the letter.
"I think to him they were all my sons"--all the pilots who died. He
goes upstairs. Mother turns to Chris and pleads with him not to take Keller to
jail, but Chris says that nobody could stop Keller now. Mother says that the
war is over--all these things are over--he cannot take away her husband. Chris
responds that Keller should not just feel sorry; Larry died not just for that.
She asks what more could be done, and Chris gives her a way to become better:
"Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and
you're responsible to it, and unless you know that, you threw away your son
because that's why he died."
A gunshot is
heard in the house. Chris runs inside and tells Ann to find the doctor. Mother
stays outside and moans her husband's name. Chris comes out in tears and says,
"Mother, I didn't mean to-" But she interrupts him and tells him not
to take the blame for his father's suicide. "Forget now. Live."
Analysis
Like her
husband, Mother is in denial. She knows about Keller's guilt, and it is the
source of her anxiety and headaches throughout the play. She is complicit in
Keller's denial, and as for her own denial, she is forcing her son to stay
alive, if only in her mind, in order to allow her to continue to live with her
husband in some acceptable way. That is, if she had to accept that her husband
effectively killed their son, then she could not bear it. But her loyalty to
Keller ironically serves to separate the couple, since her knowledge of his
guilt strains their relationship. Like her husband, she prefers to believe that
there are forces outside her control--in her case, astrology and God's choice,
both on Larry's side--that ultimately dictate life or death more than
individual choice does.
But all this is
not the blind trust of a grief-stricken mother. Just as she mistakenly thought
that Chris always knew in the back of his mind that Keller was guilty, she
always knew in her heart that Larry was dead, despite a play full of
protestations to the contrary. When Ann shows her the letter that proves
Larry's death, Mother suffers no great shock. Like Martha in Edward Albee's Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf, she learns the "death" of a
son who did not really exist anymore anyway. She knew--she always knew. What
mattered was that no one said it aloud, because that way she would not have to
examine the implications. And again like Albee's Martha, what truly died was
not the son, but the mother's self-deception, the universe she had constructed
inside her head in order to cope with the painful truth.
The title of the
play becomes clear in Keller's final line. After years of denial, he is forced
to acknowledge that the soldiers who died as a direct result of his actions
were someone's sons, and they all might as well have been his sons. But this
line, with the title, actually serves two independent arguments that run
through the work. "All
My Sons" has both an emotional center and an intellectual
center. The emotional "All My Sons" has the Keller family at its
core, being primarily concerned with the impact of shameful secrets on family
relationships, in particular how their past can come back to haunt the present.
When the work is performed, audiences are usually struck the hardest by the
story of the crime and its consequences for the Keller family.
But the
intellectual "All My Sons" is the story of that same crime and its
consequences not for the Keller family, but for the world. If Miller is
proposing a world-scale ethic of concern for everyone's sons, he proposes that
Keller (and each member of the audience) should find in himself a kind of
generalized care for all of the sons and daughters in the world. Miller later
wrote that he wanted the play to be about "unrelatedness," describing
Keller as a man who "cannot admit that he, personally, has any viable
connection with his world, his universe, or his society." The admission
that the pilots were "all my sons" is, for Keller, an admission that
he might as well have killed his own child. The admission is also a new
understanding that it should not matter whether the dead pilots could have been
his sons; rather, we all have an obligation to society to value everyone's sons
as though they were our own. Whether that level of concern is possible or
feasible, indeed whether it is healthy and desirable to refuse to help your own
children and neighbors while you try to help the whole world, is a different
question, but the idealist might give it a try.
The tension
among these values is highlighted throughout the play in Keller's and Chris's
conflicting moralities. For Keller, there is nothing more important in this
world than the family. For Chris, the destruction of the war wrought a new
"kind of--responsibility. Man for man." And in the play, Keller's
morality actually eclipses Chris's, even though Miller is giving the audience a
shot at accepting Chris's leftist argument. In the end, what draws audiences is
the emotion of a comprehensible, identifiable unit of society--that is, the
drama of the nuclear family. The primacy of Miller's unrelatedness argument is
defeated by its own truth. We will always care more about the one son whose
father we see before us and with whom we identify, than the twenty-one dead
sons who are not our own. At least, however, we can rise to the responsibility
of making wise and prudent decisions to honor both the one and the twenty-one
as well as we can.
All My Sons Summary
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.
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