All My
Sons
- By Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was an American essayist and
playwright. He has created some of the most memorable stage plays in American
literature such as “Death of a Salesman”, “The Crucible” and “A View from the
Bridge”. During World War II, his writings become more successful. In 1947, his
first Broadway success was a powerful drama titled “All My Sons”, earned his
critical and popular claim. It earned him international recognition.
All My Sons
This play is a Shakespearean
Tragedy with modern language. This play has various elements like it has ideal
characters and also the characters with lack of patriotism.
The play opens with the introduction
of a nuclear family, Joe and Kate Keller are husband-wife and they have two
children Chris and Larry. Joe has a manufacturing plant with the partnership of
his friend Steve Deever. Ann Deever is
daughter of Steve and girlfriend of Larry. Keller and Deever’s manufacturing
plant has a very profitable contract with the USA, supplying air parts. One
morning a shipment of defective parts came at the plant. Deever was confused about this that what they
should do but Keller has told him he is not able to be there because of illness
so he instructed him to weld the cracks and supply them and Deever has done
that.
Later it was discovered that the
defective parts has caused twenty one planes to crash and their pilots to die. Both
Deever and Keller have arrested, but Keller has played safe that he convinced
police that he was not there when the defective parts were supplied and he
blamed Deever for the whole matter proved that Deever is responsible for all
this and Keller is innocent.
Larry had a faith in his father but
after getting information about the first conviction and he got depressed he
wrote Ann to not wait for him and he went on the mission and crashed his plane.
His dead body was not found and he was reported missing.
Three years have been past but still
Larry was missing, Ann and Christ were in contact and wanted to marry but the
problem was Kate Keller’s superstition that Larry would come back.
Ann’s brother George has went to meet
his father Steve Deever in jail and he comes to know that his father is
innocent, George talked about this to Christ and finally Kate has accepted that
his husband is responsible for plane crash, and Joe Keller’s guilt has proved
it too. Christ has strong belief that his father is not guilty but now he was
also aware of this reality. Ann has shown the letter of Larry which he has
given to Ann before he went for mission. It was not letter but a suicide note.
Joe Keller was feeling very guilty because of him Larry has committed suicide
and he understood that all the dead pilots were his sons. He decided to
surrender and went in his room to take his coat, but a sound of gunshot is
heard and Joe killed himself.
This one act play has various themes
which give us a glimpse of that time and people. The very important one is “The
American Dream”. It was all about self centeredness and money minded mentality
of people that how they were ready to cheat and blame anyone for money. It was
a condition of twentieth century Americans, that how they were living.
Rationality was one of the very important parts of life; idealism was vanished
away and for lavish lifestyle people wanted money from anywhere for any cost.
This was all about modern man of age. “All My Sons” is the best example of
American society of that time. The
importance of past is also described in the play. Past is also has relatedness
with private and public and life of characters. “All My Sons” is a modern
Shakespearean tragic drama. I would like to conclude my interpretation by some
lines from the play,
“You want to live? You
better figure out your life.”
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