My views on the play #All My Sons by Arthur Miller

‘All my sons’ is one of the best plays by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was his first commercial successful play. His plays basically express moral, social, and political ideas.

All my sons’ very significant and attractive title, it directly appeals the curiosity of the reader. The title is very appropriate. The play is divided in to three acts. The play falls under the genre of modern tragedy.

The story is of a businessman named Joe Keller and his family. He has a business of making cylinder head for air force, but it happened once that when he was out of his business plant, at the same time there was war going on so army needs very high numbers of cylinder heads.  It so happened that his partner Steve Devers informed him on phone that by mistake some cylinders were creaked. Instead of stop him from sending it to army. Joe suggest to make repairs on those cylinder and send it to army, Steve did so and as a result of that twenty one innocent pilots were died in the plan which used those cylinder. The play opens after three years of this incident.

I have studied this play at my undergraduate. To say frankly it was my first day in collage though my collage had started before a week. I was new to that atmosphere the only after attending a one hour lecture by Pro.M.B Gaijan. what i remembered or you can say what i get after a one hour listening is that the phrase itself which is the title of the play all my sons and that is what understandable to me. It was a not so much a good experience at first. But when i read it i found it very interesting and with full of meanings lies under the text, in this writing i will try to share what i understood and feel the text appeals.

What the use of the waiting for the person who is never going to come?  Even you don’t know whether he is alive or not? 

The character Kate Keller the mother who is not ready to accept the truth that her son Larry who is one of the pilots who died in that plan crash accident.  This is not all but she does not allows Ann who has engaged to Larry and would be wife of him, but now she loves Chris the elder brother of Larry. She does not let her to marry Chris.

I will say Chris is the hero of the play a young and intelligent, highly moral and a honest and noble man who understands his responsibilities in life. But it doesn’t mean that Joe is not responsible, he too cares for his family    and he can do anything for the happiness of his family. In compare to the father Chris is completely opposite to his father’s way of thinking and way of life Chris abandon his father’s property when he came to know that it is collected by immoral ways and by some or other kind of criminal activity. He has very strong emotional capability that he lives his life in his own way without his fathers’ support.

How far it is true to personal life? How many of us can behave like Chris?

After the end of the Second World War his frustration on finding that life after the war is the same as it has been. “ that rat race again..... nobody has changed at all” it meant those who killed in the war, their sacrifice went in vain. The value of cooperation and mutual responsibility which they had built up by their actions had lost and people behave as if the war had been something like a bus accident.

When the money comes at play the all the morality and honesty fled away, is that so?

Basically money has the power to convert truth to lie and lie to truth, from criminal to an innocent person, and innocent to criminal. Here the business man Joe, plays role as a practical man and more in that he is money minded person, for him nothing matters if money is there. Thus he ordered Steve to weld those creaked cylinder and pass them to army. And that caused death of 21 pilots and when the case filed against him he escapes from the truth and denied about any call from Steve. And thus he saved himself by involving Steve in case, thus his partner sentenced to jail before the play opens. In reality it is Joe who ordered and he is the real criminal, but in the hegemony of power structure less powerful is always punished.

Why Joe Committed suicide ? 

At the end of the play Joe commits suicide a super sense of morality forced him to commit suicide. Joe is a business man it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t morality, he has his own morality and conscience but under the pressure of globalization and throat cutting competition led him to order, to sustain in the market he has to do it otherwise he too like many of the small business man by bigger one would have swallowed up. He has his morality and conscience which remain unseen until the end of the play. Morality was and is always there at his heart but greedy and selfish businessman in his heart always over power his sense of morality. Which was awaken until his son Chris touch upon it. He made him to realize the crime which Joe has committed it is he who responsible for the death of 21 innocent pilots. The sense of morality awakened by Chris by realizing him that only because of him his elder son and 21 other pilots were died. And a man is suffering behind the bars instead of him.

Even the guilt conscious which was not there until Chris left the home in the second act and abandoned his property. Actually it is he who makes Joe conscious about his guilt, make him aware about the crime he had committed.

At the end of the play the universal appeal that all good literature has is very well implied by Arthur Miller. Last words spoken by Joe that “All my sons”. Not only Larry but all those who have died were his sons, by uttering these words he is making from individual appeal to universal one.