Summary of the Play 'All My Sons':
All My Sons by Arthur Miller is a play set during the Second World War, and is about a successful businessman, Joe Keller, who has failed to fulfil his social obligations and has failed to recognise the role of society after he is blinded by lust for money during the war. He lives peacefully with his wife Kate and his son Chris, but had another son Larry who died in a plane crash during the war.
The play sets in a small town several years after World War Two, and begins with Jim Bayliss, 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 Jin 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 end of the play, 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.
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Detailed Summary of the Play
Act I
The play opens in the hedged-in backyard of the Keller
home, with Joe Keller, head of the family, father of two boys, husband to Katie
Keller, sitting outside reading the paper alongside his friend and neighbor Dr.
Jim Bayliss. Keller has two sons: one, Chris, who works with him in the family
business, and one, Larry, who died flying a mission in the Second World War.
The play is set is a non-specified suburban American town, immediately after
the war.
As the play begins, Frank Lubey, Joe’s neighbor on the
side of the property opposite Jim’s, enters the backyard and tells Joe and Jim
he (Frank) is “walking off his breakfast.” Joe offers Frank part of the paper
to read—Joe himself is reading the want ads, to “see what people want”—but
Frank declines politely, saying all the news in the paper is bad news anyway.
Frank asks Joe what’s happened to a tree in the backyard,
a tree Joe reveals was planted as a memorial to Larry, his son lost in the war.
Joe says a storm the previous night sheared the tree in half, and Frank remarks
that this is especially poignant, since Larry’s birthday was in August. Joe is
surprised and touched that Frank remembers Larry’s birthday, and Frank reveals
that he is assembling a horoscope for Larry to determine Larry’s “favorable
days.” Larry went missing on November 25, and Frank tells Joe that, if the 25th
is one of Larry’s favorable days, this would indicate, via the horoscope, that
Larry is still alive.
Frank then notices Jim (he hadn’t seen him before in the
yard), and Jim tells Frank he’s crazy for believing in astrology. Jim complains
about his income as a general-practitioner physician, but he knows he would make
less as a medical researcher—which was his dream career as a younger man. Jim
also asks whether Ann is in the house, and Joe says she is, still getting ready
for the day and eating breakfast—Ann was a girl who used to live in the
neighborhood and date Larry, and she remains a friend of the Keller family.
Jim’s wife Sue enters, saying there is a phone call for
Jim (a patient asking for care); Jim complains that patients imagine their
medical ailments, but that he needs the money and therefore needs more patients;
Sue, who is overweight and sensitive about her body, feigns jealousy, since the
patient on the phone is female. Lydia Lubey, Frank’s wife, enters the lawn
through the hedges and tells Frank that the toaster is broken. Frank, who
remarks on Lydia’s lack of technological skill, heads off-stage to address the
toaster problem.
Chris comes downstairs, and Joe greets him, asking how
Annie’s doing; Chris says she’s doing fine and asks for the book section of the
newspaper. A boy from the neighborhood named Bert enters to speak with Joe; Joe
is playing a long-term game with Bert, where Bert surveys the neighborhood as
part of a volunteer police force and reports any information he’s learned back
to Joe. Bert asks Joe if he can see the “jail” in the basement of the Keller
house, but Joe says Bert has to wait a while longer to see this fictitious
basement jail.
Chris and Joe look at the shorn tree that once
memorialized Larry. Chris tells Joe, to Joe’s surprise, that Kate, Joe’s wife
and Chris’s mother, has already seen the tree in its broken state; she was
outside when the wind broke it. Chris tells Joe, as Joe already knows, that
Kate has trouble sleeping, and was pacing outside when the damage occurred the
previous night. Chris tells Joe that the tree’s partial destruction caused Kate
to run back inside and weep in the bathroom the remainder of the night.
Chris continues talking to his father, saying that they
(he and his father) have “made a mistake” with Kate because they have kept her
under the false impression that Larry might still be alive, even though he went
missing in battle three years before. Chris has given up all hope of Larry
being found alive; Joe seems to think it is possible, however slightly, that
Larry is still living, but he keeps up the ruse of “waiting for Larry” mostly
to satisfy Kate, who will not give up hope, and who believes Larry could come
home at any moment.
Chris pulls closer to his father and continues talking.
He tells Joe that he invited Annie to visit because he wants to ask her to
marry him, even though he knows that Annie was once “Larry’s girl,” and even
though Kate will not approve of the union—since it will mean, symbolically,
that Larry is truly dead, and that Chris, Annie, and the rest of the Keller
family and have moved on from Larry’s death.
Joe is nervous about how this news will affect Kate, and
he refuses to tell Chris, in a straightforward manner, how he feels about Chris
marrying Annie—Joe is primarily worried that the news will cause Kate distress.
Chris complains that Joe wants to fade into the background on important
decisions; Chris also says that he has “reached for things” his entire life,
and that, now, he knows what he wants, and is going to take it. Joe asks if
Annie feels the same way about Chris, and Chris admits that he hasn’t talked
about it explicitly with Annie, but that her letters indicate she would be open
to a proposal.
At the high point of their argument, Chris threatens to
marry Annie and run away to New York City—where Annie currently lives—in order
to start a new, married life there. Joe is shocked that Chris would consider
giving up the family business, one that Joe has worked hard to build up and
hand over, eventually, to his son. Without their argument being resolved, Kate
walks outside and sees them talking; interrupting, she asks Joe if he threw out
a bag of potatoes in the kitchen, and Joe admits that he did, by accident.
Joe grumbles about needing a maid around the house to
help his wife, and Kate reminds Joe that they have a maid, and that today is
her day off. Joe sits off to the side, and Chris helps Kate peel green beans
for dinner. Kate complains of a bad night’s sleep and said she has something
like, but not quite, a headache—when Chris tries to prime his mother about
Annie’s appearance, hoping Kate will be happy to have Annie around, Kate seems
confused as to why Annie is visiting the Keller home. But Kate also says she
likes the fact that Annie has not moved on from Larry and gotten married. Kate
complains that many women whose husbands or boyfriends died in the war wasted
no time in finding new spouses.
Chris becomes upset with his mother, indicating to her
that, perhaps, Annie is no longer mourning Larry, and that she has waited to
get married for other reasons. But Kate will have none of that. She instead
tells Chris about her dream of the previous night, the dream that caused her to
go outside. In it, she was up in the air with Larry, but Larry began falling
rapidly toward earth, and as Kate ran outside to catch him, she saw his tree
cut in half by the wind. Kate says that she knew that should have waited longer
to plant a tree in Larry’s memory.
Chris is shocked to hear that Kate believes it is “too
soon” to be mourning Larry. Chris says that the tree’s being cut in half has no
significance for Larry’s life or death, and he says the family ought to try to
move on and forget the idea that Larry might be alive. Kate asks Chris to fetch
her aspirin, instead of answering him directly, and turns to Joe, still in the
yard, asking Joe why Annie has come to visit. Joe claims he has no more
information about it than Kate does, but Kate realizes Chris wants to marry
Annie, and says she will not permit it: Annie is “Larry’s girl” to Kate.
Kate reminds Joe of the other Americans presumed lost in
the war who have returned home, but Joe says the chances of Larry returning are
very slim. Kate still believes, or wants to believe, that Annie, too, is
waiting for Larry to return. As the two are talking, Bert comes back to report
to Joe on his sweep of the neighborhood, and asks again to see the jail in the
Keller cellar, but Kate snaps at Bert, claiming there is no jail there. Joe is
upset, saying he has “nothing to hide,” and Kate agrees that Joe has nothing to
hide; Bert seems confused by these cryptic comments and by Kate’s shouting, and
leaves the property.
Just then, Annie comes out with Chris to say hello to Joe
and Kate. Joe is happy to see Annie and tells her how beautiful she is, but
Kate seems upset and wants only to critique Annie’s appearance, especially
after Chris says how beautiful she is, too. Jim comes over and meets Annie, and
Annie remarks that it wasn’t so long ago she and her family lived in what is
now the Bayliss house, and played around with the Keller boys along with her
brother, George. Jim is called back to his house by Sue, for another phone call
with a patient.
Annie tells Chris, in front of Joe and Kate, that she’s
surprised he has so many clothes, but Chris reveals that Annie is staying in
Larry’s old room, and that the clothes and shoes, still shined by Kate, are
Larry’s—Annie seems shocked by this, and wonders aloud whether Kate is still
waiting for Larry to return. Annie admits, after some prodding by Kate, that
she is not dating anyone seriously, but when Kate sees this as evidence Annie
is waiting for Larry to return, and tells Annie as much, Annie replies, flatly,
that she is not waiting for Larry, and that Kate must be the only mother still
in America to do so, after three long years.
Joe and Kate also ask after Annie’s father, Steve, and
mother—there seems to have been some trouble in their relationship, and Annie
tells them, obliquely, that her parents won’t get divorced, that she doesn’t
want anything to do with her father, and that eventually her father will get
out of jail, where he is incarcerated for an as-yet-unrevealed crime, and will
join Annie’s mother in New York.
Frank comes over and says hello; Annie remarks that Frank
is growing bald, and Kate tells Annie that Frank has three kids with Lydia now.
Annie and Frank appear uncomfortable around one another, especially Frank, and
it seems they had some kind of courtship, or the inkling of one, in the past.
Frank bids Annie a hasty goodbye after asking about her father in prison,
saying he should be let out soon.
Annie turns to Chris and asks him if the neighborhood is
still talking about her father’s trial and imprisonment. Although Chris assures
her that they aren’t, Annie worries that the issues have never gone away in the
small town. Joe, who seems also to have been involved in the trial, says that,
when he was exonerated after a re-trial (the trial which appears, also, to have
sent Steve to jail), he walked home with his head held high, and although some
women in the block refused to speak to him at first, and considered him a
“murderer,” Joe kept on doing his business in the community, and eventually
regained all the friends he had appeared to lose during his trial. Joe does not
go into specifics about the nature of the trial, though—the audiences is left
guessing as to its true nature.
Joe tells Annie that her father and mother should move
back to town after her father is released from jail. Joe says this is the only
way to “lick” those who would call her father a traitor, a murderer, an evil
man. Joe asks if Annie ever talks to her father in prison, and Annie says she
does not; she thinks he is a murderer, and Chris appears to agree, saying that
Steve “killed” 21 American pilots in the war. Again, this fact is not explained
further.
Annie goes so far as to wonder whether her father’s
negligence didn’t kill Larry, who happened to go missing in a plane crash. But
Kate begs Annie never to say again that her father’s negligent act was
responsible for Larry’s going missing—Kate cannot handle this possibility and
goes inside, clearly upset. Joe turns, somewhat angrily, to Annie, and explains
to her that she knows Larry never flew P-40s, and that the malfunction for
which Steve was apparently responsible—a manufacturing error—had nothing to do
with the kind of plane Larry would have flown.
Joe continues, explaining to Annie what her father has
done (and, simultaneously, providing the audience with more context): Steve and
Joe worked together in Joe’s business (Steve was Joe’s direct subordinate), and
Steve OK’d the production of parts he knew to be flawed for placement in
American airplanes, since he was afraid that, if the flaws were discovered, the
company would lose the contract and a great deal of business. Thus, Steve
painted over the cracks in a small batch of parts, making them appear whole;
they were then installed in American fighter planes, 21 of which crashed,
killing their pilots. Steve and Joe were both charged with criminal wrongdoing
in the pilots’ deaths, but Joe managed to be exonerated, claiming that the idea
to pass off the faulty parts was entirely Steve’s, and that Steve acted alone.
Joe tells Annie that her father is not a bad man, that he
just made a mistake, and that he’s no murderer. Chris becomes angry with his
father for even bringing up this whole mess, which seems to have been a major
event in the Keller family and in Annie’s, but Annie tells Chris that Joe is
just trying to keep the peace and make everyone around him happy. Joe peps
up—the “heavy” conversation is over, and he tells Chris and Annie to get ready
for a nice dinner they’ll be having that evening.
Joe goes inside, leaving Chris and Annie alone. Annie
tells Chris he’s been acting strange so far on her visit, and Chris, with
Annie’s urging, bumbles into his revelation: that he’s in love with Annie and
hopes to marry her. Annie has figured this to be true all along, and tells
Chris she loves him, too, and that she has waited for Chris because they have
started up a correspondence again over the past two years. They kiss, and Annie
tells Chris to kiss her like he means it, and not like he’s just Larry’s
brother. Annie asks Chris if Chris is ashamed about their union, and Chris says
no, but that he is worried what his parents, especially his mother, will say
when they announce their engagement.
Chris tells Annie that he’s not “ashamed” to be courting
his brother’s girl, but that he feels guilty, somewhat, at the life he leads
now—a life that only those who survived the war can have. He tells Annie a
brief story about a young soldier, in the war, who lent him his (the soldier’s)
only remaining pair of dry socks; this kind of brotherhood, Chris says, was
commonplace in the war, but now, he feels he can only live a kind of sterile
American fantasy: make money, drive a fancy car, and continue his life in the
family business.
At that, however, Chris turns to Annie and says that he
will make her a fortune—Annie replies that she doesn’t need a fortune, and
wouldn’t know what to do with one, and Chris, having snapped out of his reverie
about war-time versus peacetime life, kisses Annie. Joe comes outside again and
briefly teases the two of them for kissing, then tells Annie that her brother,
George, is on the line, long-distance, from Columbus. Annie is doubly shocked:
to hear that George is calling to her, and to know that George is in Columbus,
which is where her father is in jail.
Annie goes inside to answer George’s phone call. Chris
tells his father that he and Annie are getting married, and Joe seems
unaffected by this news, as though he has something more important to tell
Chris. Joe asks if Chris, too, doesn’t find it a bit of a coincidence that
Annie comes to visit at the same time George is visiting Annie and George’s
father in jail. Chris isn’t sure of what his father is insinuating; Joe asks,
straight-out, if Annie still harbors a grudge against Joe for her father’s prison
term, since Joe averred that Steve acted alone, without Joe’s input, in OK’ing
the production of the cracked parts. This was what enabled Joe to get off
scot-free, and what put Steve in jail.
After Chris insists that Annie’s visit would have nothing
to do with George, and that Annie harbors no grudge against Joe for her
father’s fate (in fact, she strictly blames her father), Joe appears cheered,
saying he wants to build Chris a big house, wants to change the name of the
company from J. O. Keller to Christopher Keller, Inc., and announcing that he
is excited about Chris’s wedding to Annie.
Annie comes back on-stage and announces that her brother
is taking the seven-o’clock train from Columbus to the small town, and that he
has something important he wants to discuss regarding his father with Joe.
Annie, clearly shaken, tells Chris she wants to go for a drive, and the two
exit to do so. Kate comes outside and warns Joe that George’s arrival can’t
bode well—George, now a lawyer living in New York, would need a significant
reason to visit his father in Columbus (his first visit in three years to his
father’s jail cell), and then to visit Joe in the small town. Joe, agitated,
says all will be well when George visits, but Kate warns him that he’d “better
be smart,” prepared to answer whatever questions George has for him.
Act II
The Act opens on the evening of the same day. Chris is
outside, in dress pants but no shirt, clearing away the brush from Larry’s
sheared tree. Kate comes out, not yet dressed for dinner, to see what Chris is
doing. Kate tells Chris that Joe is sleeping—that he always sleeps when he’s
worried—and that Chris has to “protect” Kate and Joe from whatever George wants
with the family, when he visits. Kate believes that George has never given up
the idea that Joe is the one who ordered Steve to OK the faulty parts; Kate
worries that George has come with new information about the trial and Steve’s
imprisonment. Kate also wonders aloud whether Annie is “in on” George’s plan to
ruin the Keller family.
Chris forcefully but still politely objects to the idea
that Annie has anything to do with George’s visit. Annie comes outside, and
Kate goes inside to get ready for dinner. Annie and Chris agree that they will
inform Kate formally, tonight, of their intention to marry; Chris then goes
inside to put on a shirt for dinner. Sue comes into the yard, where Annie is
now alone, looking for Jim; they begin having a conversation. At first, Sue
appears to be happy Annie is visiting, and the conversation is civil, but very
quickly Sue takes on an accusatory tone. She tells Annie she finds it “odd”
that Annie would consider marrying the brother of her old sweetheart.
Annie brushes off this criticism, but Sue continues,
saying that, if Annie and Chris do marry, Sue and Jim want them to move
somewhere far away. Annie is shocked by this, but Sue continues that Jim, who
does not make much money in his general practice, but who nevertheless wanted
an even lower-paying job as a medical researcher before Sue made him start
seeing patients, envies Chris a great deal. Sue is not sure that Jim could
stand having Chris married to a beautiful girl, living next door in the
successful Keller household.
Sue then becomes even more pointed in her criticisms: she
tells Annie that she and Jim “know” that Joe merely lied to get out of jail
time and to put Steve in prison; she says she hates living next to the “Holy
Family,” the Kellers, and she finds Chris’s “phony idealism” to be immensely
frustrating. Annie cannot believe what she’s hearing, but as Sue is winding up
her complaints, Chris comes back outside, dressed, and Sue is polite with him,
then leaves to go back to the Bayliss house. Chris seems happy to be outside
with Annie, but Annie is upset at Sue’s comments.
After Sue leaves, Chris begins saying how much he likes
her, and that she’s a good nurse, but Annie snaps, immediately, that Sue
“hates” Chris and the Kellers—she doesn’t understand how Chris can be so nice
and forgiving to everyone. Annie asks Chris why he pretended that the whole
town had forgotten about the Joe-Steve affair, and Chris says he was worried,
at first, that Annie would find it strange to come back to town to visit, if
she knew the neighbors were still thinking about the faulty parts scandal.
Annie tells Chris that he must be prepared to “leave his
family behind” if it is revealed that Joe had something to do with the faulty
parts. Chris takes this news hard, and is unwilling to abandon his family in
that way, but Annie replies that she has given up her own father; she also says
that George’s visit is probably not in the form of a marital “blessing,” and
that Chris must be prepared for a bitter confrontation with him.
Joe comes outside and now seems happy at the idea that
Chris and Annie are in love—he sees them together and assumes they are once
again sharing a quiet moment outside. Joe tells Annie, quite seriously, that
he’s been thinking, and that he could set George up with a lawyer job in the
small town, and, additionally, could probably find a job for Steve back at
Keller, Inc. Annie is surprised that Joe would want to do anything for either
man, and Chris says it is Annie’s right to not want to talk to her own father,
but Joe becomes immensely upset at this, saying that “a father’s a father,”
before calming himself and walking back inside to shave.
Jim arrives with George—he has picked George up at the
train station. Leaving George in the car, Jim walks up to Chris and Annie,
still outside, to tell Chris that he ought to drive George somewhere farther
away and try to “talk sense” to him at a remote location. Jim is worried that
George’s anger, which Jim believes to have to do with the Joe-Steve affair,
will only cause Kate grief, and Jim is worried about Kate’s fragile state of
mind. But Chris says George ought to come inside, and as he almost exits the
stage to find George in the car, George enters, looking anxious and bedraggled,
barely acknowledging his sister Annie.
George then says hello, gruffly, to Sue, and asks whether
she and Jim are the people that bought their old house (the Deever house). Sue
says they are and invites George to see the changes they’ve made; George says
he liked the house better before. George drinks some of the grape beverage Kate
has set out for him—an old favorite—but announces sourly to Ann and Chris that
he’s been to see his father, who looks “smaller” now in prison; George also
says, cryptically, to Chris, that one should expect only to make a sucker of a
man once, not twice. Chris presumes George is talking about Joe’s relationship
to Steve.
George then asks Annie, gruffly, if she’s married yet to
Chris; Annie says she’s not yet married, and George announces that Annie will
not marry Chris at all, and implies that, before Annie left New York to visit
the small town, she told George that she was going with the intention to marry
Chris. This prompted remorse in George, who wanted to tell Steve of Annie’s
impending marriage; thus George flew to Columbus to see Steve, where Steve told
him, in person, the true story of the Joe-Steve affair.
George tells Annie and Chris, in the yard, that Joe
ordered Steve, on the phone three years ago, to weld over the defective parts,
then Joe pretended he was sick with flu, keeping him from going down to the
factory himself to oversee the welding. Joe knew he could always deny the phone
call, and that Steve would be made the “patsy” while Joe would get off
scot-free. Chris does not believe George, telling him that this is the same
story Steve told in court, but George has a new fire in his eyes, and now
believes that the Keller family ruined the Deevers.
Chris tells George that Steve is a timid man who wants to
shift the blame to someone else; but George counters that Joe was such an
overbearing and exacting boss, it seems almost impossible that he would have
let over 100 parts roll of the line without inspecting them himself. Chris
admits to George that he has considered, in his quieter moments, whether his
father was perhaps guilty of passing off the defective parts, but Chris says
that, despite this, he believes in his father’s innocence. George is insistent
that Joe is guilty, however, and says he will take Annie away—that Annie is the
last “prize” that the Kellers will not be allowed to take from the Deevers.
But Kate comes outside and, sensing there is trouble,
tries to soothe George, talking about his favorite foods, which she says she’ll
cook for him, and about the old neighborhood. George seems at least temporarily
placated, and Kate agrees that they will have a dinner at the house that night,
instead of going out; but Chris tells George that, if he stays for the evening,
there will be no more arguing. Lydia comes over and shyly says hello to George;
it appears that, like Annie and Frank, George and Lydia had a long-ago
courtship, and George is surprised to learn that Lydia has three children.
Lydia tells George that she wound up with Frank, in part,
because Frank never went to war, but always “just missed” the draft by a year
(he was too old); that was why Frank took up an interest in astrology, since he
believed that birth-dates had a great deal to do with a man’s future. Lydia
demurely goes back to her house, and George seems wistful that he did not marry
her.
At this, Joe comes downstairs and strains his “joviality”
to welcome George. He asks how George is doing, and how Steve is; George says
Steve seems “sick” in his soul, and that he hates Joe’s guts, and would never
accept the offer, which Joe makes to George, of a place for Steve at Keller,
Inc. when Steve is released. Joe tells George that, though his father is a good
man, Steve was never able to take the blame for his actions; Joe lists several
instances in the past when, as a subordinate of Joe’s, Steve made mistakes and
then attempted to shift blame to someone else.
Kate comes outside again and finally convinces George to
stay for dinner and get on the midnight train instead; George seems ready to
agree, and, looking at Joe with a kinder eye, says Joe has not changed at all
over the years. Kate jumps in to say that Joe hasn’t been sick at all for
fifteen years, and immediately George wonders about the time Joe called in sick
the night of the production of the faulty parts. George corrects Joe and Kate,
saying Joe was sick once, and though Joe and Kate attempt to cover their
tracks, saying that they had forgotten about that single incident, George is
once again suspicious that Joe and Kate are lying.
Kate goes inside for a moment, and comes back out to
announce that she’s packed Annie’s bag, and that Annie can leave with George.
Chris and Annie both say that Annie will only leave when Chris wants her to,
but George is now saying he wants to take Annie away immediately. Frank comes
over, at this inopportune moment, to say he has finished his astrological
calculations, and that November 25th was in fact a favorable day for Larry,
meaning Larry “can’t” have died on that day. Kate appreciates this information
and sends Frank back to his home; Kate then turns to Joe and Chris, while Annie
walks to the driveway to George to talk sense to him, and says that Chris will
never marry Annie as long as she lives, because Larry is alive and Annie is
Larry’s girl.
Kate then screams to Joe and Chris that Chris has to
understand something: if Larry is dead, then Joe “killed” him, and “God doesn’t
allow fathers to kill their sons.” At this, Kate runs inside, distraught, and
Chris realizes that Joe probably had something to do with the production of the
faulty parts. Joe says, meekly, once again, that Larry never flew a P-40, the
plane into which the defective parts went, but Chris presses him, and finally
Joe confesses that he did give the OK order to produce the faulty parts and
ship them, and that he did so to save the business, because he was worried
about losing the government contract.
Chris can’t believe that his father is responsible for the murder of 21 pilots, and though Joe keeps arguing that he’s not responsible for Larry’s death, Chris is too horrified by his father’s actions to believe anything he says anymore. Chris tells his father, as the act ends, that as he (Chris) was out nearly dying in wartime to protect his country, his own father was selling bad parts to the army that ended up killing soldiers. Chris is devastated by this news, tearful and enraged.
Act III
At the beginning of this short, final Act, Jim finds Kate
outside, rocking on the porch by the backyard, at two in the morning. Kate
tells Jim she is waiting for Chris to come back; he took the car, after his
argument with Joe, and drove to an unknown place. Kate also tells Jim that
Annie is upstairs in her room, and that she has been there since George took
his cab away from the Keller house.
Jim alludes to the possibility of an argument between
Chris and Joe over Annie, but Kate tells him, flat-out, that the argument was
about George and Steve. Jim reveals that he has known, too, that Joe was
responsible for the faulty parts, and that Joe, Kate, and he himself have a
“talent for lying” that Chris does not possess—his father’s secret has
destroyed Chris, though it did not destroy the rest of the neighborhood. Jim
tells Kate that he once left Sue for two months, and drove down to New Orleans,
but that Sue came after him, found him, and brought him home.
Joe comes outside to see how Kate is doing, and Jim goes
offstage, saying he will take his car and drive around the park looking for
Chris. Joe and Kate have a small argument, in which Kate says Joe always get
angry when the chips are down, but that getting angry won’t solve their current
crisis. Kate tells Joe she believes that Annie has figured out the nature of
Chris’s argument with Joe, and that she therefore knows Joe is responsible for
the parts. Kate tells Joe that Chris will want Joe to go to prison, but Joe
says he can’t do that, now, that decisions have been made and his life and
family are settled. Kate says that she worries that war “changed” something in
Chris, and Joe wonders aloud whether Larry wouldn’t have been better equipped
to deal with the “necessary compromises” Joe had to make to protect his
business and his family.
At this, Annie comes out to the porch, and sits silently
for a moment with Joe and Kate. They find they have difficulty saying anything
to one another—they all know what has transpired that night. But Annie finally
speaks—she tells Kate that she wants Kate to speak directly to Chris,
apologizing for keeping the memory of Larry alive. Annie vows that Larry is in
fact dead, and that Kate knows it. But Kate protests—she feels that there is
still hope Larry is alive. Annie says she has proof Larry is dead, and as Chris
walks back onto the stage, exhausted after his night of ruminating, Kate reads
the letter and moans, knowing that it proves Larry’s death. Kate does not
reveal the contents of the letter aloud, however, nor does Annie.
In the meantime, Joe has gone upstairs, unable to handle
the family’s trauma, and so he does not learn of the letter immediately. Chris
asks Annie and Kate, who is in morbid shock, to sit down: he announces to both
that he is leaving the small town to take a job in Cleveland, that he always
doubted his father’s innocence but worked for his father anyway, and that this
action, this unwillingness to believe the truth, is proof of his own cowardice.
But Annie says that she will go with Chris whether he wants, and Chris weighs
whether or not to take her with him.
Chris also announces that he would not want his father to
go to jail; that jail would not solve anything, now, nor would it truly punish
the deed that his father has done. Joe comes outside to join Annie, Kate, and
Chris, and tells Chris that, if Chris wants, he will go to jail (he has not
heard Chris’s previous words on the subject). Joe tells Chris that Chris also
can give away all the family’s earnings if Chris feels they have been tainted
with the blood of American soldiers. Chris tells his father simply to get away
from him, that he wants nothing to do with Joe.
Annie takes the letter and, though Kate tries to
intercept her, shoves it in Chris’s hands, telling Chris it was the last thing
Larry sent her—Annie does this, it seems, to persuade Chris to take her with
him, since Larry is truly dead. Chris reads aloud, despite Kate’s efforts to
move Joe away from him (to keep Joe from hearing), that Larry was aware,
overseas, of Steve and Joe’s trial, and that, out of shame, Larry decided, the
day after the letter, to pilot his plane intentionally into the sea, committing
suicide rather than confronting the wrongs he believes his father has
committed.
This news is horrific and devastates Joe, who always felt
that, though he was responsible for the deaths of some pilots, he was not
responsible for Larry’s. Joe tells Annie, Kate, and Chris that, although he
always thought he didn’t kill his own son, he has now realized that all the
boys, all the soldiers who died because of faulty parts, were “his sons.” Joe
says he is going upstairs to get ready to turn himself in in jail, while Kate
screams at Chris for reading the letter, and says that Joe will not be able to
survive in prison.
Chris tells his mother that, finally, the family is
confronting the reality that they have obligations to others in the world, not
just to themselves—that their responsibilities lie outside the immediate Keller
family. Upstairs, a gunshot is heard, and Kate screams again, calling for Jim;
Joe has shot himself out of grief. Chris is now doubly upset, for he tells his
mother he didn’t intend for Joe to kill himself—he simply wanted his father to
know the truth. But as Annie stands on watching mutely, Kate tells Annie and
Chris that now they ought to go away—that they must live as best they can,
despite the horrors they have seen. The play ends.
Character Sketch of Joe Keller
The protagonist in All My Sons, Joe is onstage for most of the play who is the epitome of crass capitalist. About sixty years old, Joe is not highly educated and polished, but he is a strong, self-made business leader, respected and popular among his neighbors and family, a personification of the postwar American Dream. However, Joe has a sordid secret in his past concerning his own role in a crime that involved allowing his factory to send out faulty airplane engines, resulting in the deaths of many American pilots in the war. Joe is not as honest and respectable as he wants to appear, and he is driven by his single-minded desire to provide for his family.
Joe’s
true nature, which contrasts dramatically to his outward persona, is slowly
revealed over the course of the play. At times, his neighbors doubt his innocence and indicate
that there is talk behind his back. In Act Two, Sue tells Ann that
“Everybody knows Joe pulled a fast one to get out of jail.” Joe denies any
responsibility and allows his business partner, Steve Deever, to take the
blame. He even faked having the flu on the day the faulty engines were
discovered so that he would not be at the plant when they were caulked
and shipped. In Act Three, when Ann shares the letter that reveals Larry’s
suicide, Joe claims that he did everything to protect his family. He then
pretends that he will go to jail himself, but because his true nature has been
exposed, he kills himself.
Joe Keller cares most about money and family. He cannot, or chooses not to, think beyond money, business success, and profit in the name of supporting his family. Blinded by the lust for money, Keller faces disastrous consequences. His downfall represents the downfall of the postwar American culture, which compromised integrity for the sake of monetary and social success. In Act Three, it appears that Joe has finally accepted responsibility. However, the cowardice of his offstage suicide shows that he cannot bear to handle the truth that he has let down his family. He chooses death over honesty and values his own American Dream above personal responsibility.
Crass : showing no intellence or sensitivity
Sordid : dirty and unpleasant
Caulked : sealed the gaps
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Character Sketch of Kate Keller
Referred to as "Mother" in the play, Kate Keller is
indeed motherly, if not always in a positive way. She is a devoted wife of Joe
Keller. She attempts to control people and situations and has been successful
in doing so until the enormity of her husband's crime can no longer remain
hidden. Kate is observant
and clever, able to
assess a situation and act quickly and accordingly, to her advantage. Miller
describes her as "a woman of uncontrolled inspirations, and an
overwhelming capacity for love." In some ways, she is the moral centre of
the play.
Outwardly, Kate is a
loving, simple, domesticated mother, as much a part of the
mid-twentieth-century American Dream as her successful businessman husband. In
the beginning, she appears secondary and submissive to Joe, but as the play
unfolds, Kate grows stronger, until the moment when she slaps Joe across the
face. Kate refuses to accept Chris’s marriage to Ann because it would mean that
Larry is dead. If Larry is dead, it means that Joe is morally guilty of his
son’s death, the terrible truth revealed in Act Two. Act Three reveals an even
deeper truth: as Kate enters into the light of truth and acceptance, Joe
retreats into the shadows of his own guilt.
Along
with Chris, she is the character who changes the most throughout the play.
Kate carries the burden of Joe’s secret while he puts on a jovial public face. In fact, it is Joe who is in denial, not
Kate. Kate denies Larry’s death because she has no choice. Accepting his
suicide would mean that Joe was responsible for the deaths of the pilots in the
war, and Kate says explicitly that God would never allow such a reality.
When Kate reads
Larry’s letter and realizes that he took his own life, she is crushed, but she
is also set free from the emotional jail that she has lived in for three years.
At the play’s conclusion, Joe is dead inside the house, still hiding from the
truth, and Kate is in the open, holding and comforting her living son, Chris.
Enormity : wickedness
observant
: watchful;
alert
jovial : cheerful and friendly
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Symbols in All My Sons
Apple Tree
The toppled apple tree, laden with all its Christian symbolism,
sits downstage left in honor of Larry. Just as Adam and Eve ate the fruit in
the Garden of Eden that led to the fall of man, so does the fall of Larry’s
tree symbolize the start of the fall of his family. Fruit still clings to its
branches, the way that Larry’s memory still clings to his family. Several
characters comment on the tree’s fate and are physically drawn toward it during
the action. Kate complains that they planted it too soon and remarks on the
coincidence that the tree blew down in the month Larry was born and on the very
day that Ann visits. Kate saw the tree snap right in front of her as she walked
in the windy yard.
Act Two opens with Chris sawing the broken-off portion of the tree, leaving only a stump that remains visible throughout the rest of the play. When George appears, he remarks that the trees have gotten thick, symbolizing the tangled delusions that nearly obscure the deadly pretenses of these households.
Dry Socks
In a conversation with Annie at
the close of Act 1, Chris recounts a brief story of a GI in the war who offered
Chris his last pair of dry socks. Chris views this gesture, and these socks, as
indicative of the kind of care and brotherhood soldiers showed to one another
in battle, and Chris rues the idea that this brotherhood is now lost in
post-war, materialist culture. Chris’s dry socks, like the tree, are also a
complex symbol. To Chris, the dry socks are an uncomplicated way of
representing camaraderie in battle. But it is clear, in the context of the
play, that Chris wishes all moral decisions in peacetime resembled the moral
clarity the socks represent. Working in the family business, and coping with
his father’s guilt in the manufacturing fiasco, are not so simple as this act
of kindness and charity, and Chris bemoans the fact that, in his adult life, he
must confront a moral universe far more complicated, far less black-and-white,
than the one in which he took solace during combat.
Jail
Eight-year-old Bert plays an ongoing game with Joe Keller in which
Joe pretends to have a jail in his basement. This make-believe jail represents
what lies beneath the Keller house and what weighs down the Keller family: a
terrible secret. Joe and Bert’s game maddens Kate, who yells at them to stop.
Joe also has an arresting gun, a playful antic that foreshadows the suicidal
gunshot at the play’s conclusion.
There are real jails in the play, too, as first mentioned by Frank
in Act One in reference to Steve being in prison. Joe also spent time in prison
until he was exonerated of the munitions crime. Joe describes being in the cell
next to Steve when they heard the news of Larry’s disappearance. When Joe
finally admits his guilt, both Kate and Chris tell him that he belongs in jail,
a reality he seems to accept but then denies by killing himself.
Airplanes
The
damaged airplanes flown by twenty-one Air Force pilots hover in the
metaphorical center of the play, but other airplanes also contribute to the
play’s meaning. Larry flew over the Keller house when he was in training, which
Kate recalled in Act One. In a vision, Kate heard the roar of his engine right
before the apple tree snapped. Kate remarks that George takes an airplane from
New York to see his father after three long years, a detail that shows the
importance and urgency of his trip.
As the play reaches its climax, Chris demands to know how his father could allow faulty engines to be sent to war. Joe retorts that he never thought the engines would be installed in planes, and Chris accuses, “Kids were hanging in the air by those heads. You knew that!” A symbol of the technical progress during World War II, airplanes were the means to winning the war. However, in All My Sons, airplanes symbolize the dark underbelly of the deadly military-industrial complex, and even more so, the danger of the American Dream.
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Q. How is the title of the play ‘All My Sons’
justified?
Answer:
The title of All My Sons represents
Joe Keller's eventual realization that he—along with everyone, for that
matter—has a responsibility for the well-being of everyone in a community.
Although he is a successful businessman by the time of the story's events, Joe
has a dark secret from his past when he worked in manufacturing for the war.
Due to his negligence while running a factory, Joe's actions led to the death
of twenty-one American pilots and the conviction of his business partner.
Although
Joe was eventually exonerated,
he holds some responsibility for these tragic and avoidable deaths, although he
does not see it this way.
Joe's
son Chris discovers this dark secret. He starts to view his father as culpable for the death of
his brother Larry, who went missing during the war. In fact, Larry, who is shamed beyond endurance by his father's
reprehensible acts, commits suicide.
Joe
defends himself by repeating that Larry did not even fly on one of the planes
with defective parts. Therefore, he is not responsible. This highlights the
fact that Joe does not feel any larger responsibility for what his actions
represent.
In
the end, Joe comes to realize that he had a responsibility to the wider
community and that he is indeed culpable for those twenty-one deaths and, tangentially, his son's as
well. This is where the title gets referenced:
“Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my
sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.”
The realization of what he has done to these other sons leads
to his decision to commit suicide in the play’s conclusion.
Exonerated: cleared from accusation
culpable: deserving blame
Tangentially: indirectly
Q. What is the turning point, climax, and resolution in All My Sons?
Ans: In the play "All My Sons," the 'climax' occurs when Chris confronts his father Joe about selling faulty plane parts. Joe initially avoids taking full responsibility, but eventually admits his wrongdoing and its consequences. The following day, Chris decides to leave home, and Joe acknowledges his part in the deaths caused by the faulty engines. This leads to Joe's tragic suicide which is the resolution in the play. Before these events, Joe had pretended he didn't know about the defective parts and the family believed Chris's brother was missing instead of dead. A letter from Larry, Chris's brother, surfaces revealing his knowledge of Joe's guilt, pushing Joe to face his role in his son's death and ultimately leading to his suicide.
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