All My Sons

 

          All My Sons.

Hello Readers.....

  Introduction : Arthur Miller 

American playwright Arthur Miller is known for combining social awareness with a searching concern for his characters' inner lives. He is best known for Death of a Salesman (1949).

Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His best-known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Death of a Salesman.

American playwright Arthur Miller was born and raised in New York City, where his father owned a successful manufacturing business. The Great Depression, however, brought financial ruin onto his father, demonstrating to the young Miller the insecurity of modern existence.

American playwright Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005, in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 89 years old. He died of heart failure.

       

    Introduction : 

   

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.

Dark truths, cruel ironies and the power of guilt are explored in Arthur Miller's award-winning drama, “All My Sons.” Based on a true story, the 1947 play is onstage at TheatreWorks New Milford, Friday, Sept. ... “All My Sons” tells the tale of Joe Keller, a successful, self-made American man who has done a terrible thing.

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, like so much of his acclaimed works, seeks to explore the most compelling questions about everyday life and the common man. What is “the good life?” What  choices must we make to acquire it? What lies must we tell and truths must we face in the  process? What do we owe to our community? Written in 1945, the play addresses the complexities of an America just beginning to recover  from World War II, a world full of loss and hope, recrimination and redemption. After the  frugality of the Depression and war years, it was a society where affluence and abundance could  overcome personal ethics. Advertisements and propaganda elevated the tenets of capitalism  and portrayed the purchase of refrigerators, es, and automobiles as downright patriotic. What relevance might Miller’s play hold for today’s students? In an era where they are bom- barded with messages of commercialism, rampant materialism, and profiteering, All My Sons  and its implicit warnings hold plenty of parallels. Americans and their values are just as difficult  to define and justify today as in the postwar decade of Miller’s text. And the everyday choices  persons make can be just as complex and ambiguous. All My Sons provides multiple, rich opportunities for college and career-ready analysis and  activities. In this guide, each of Miller’s three acts serves as the anchor piece for a “text set.”  Each anchor is complemented by additional texts such as speeches, primary documents,  videos, or images, providing multi-leveled and multi-modal access to the complexities of  Miller’s play. Discussion questions and key quotations are provided to elicit student response.  Activities integrate college and career ready skills such as evaluating claims, citing text evidence,  drawing inferences, determining multiple themes, and analyzing rhetoric, purpose and point  of view. Students will take ownership as they read closely and analyze critically, necessary skills  in today’s classrooms and beyond

The play opens in the backyard of the Keller home, on an August morning following a violent storm. A fallen apple tree, its branches still full of fruit, lies in pieces on the ground. Joe Keller  surveys the damage while visiting with his neighbors, Jim and Frank. The men are joined for a  short time by their wives, as well as a neighborhood boy, Bert. Talk turns to Annie, former  fiancé to Keller’s missing son Larry. Ann is visiting at the invitation of Keller’s other son, Chris.  Chris and Ann wish to get married despite the misgivings of Kate Keller, the family matriarch,  who continues to hold out hope that Larry may still be alive. Annie admits she has cut ties with  her father Steve, who remains in prison for shipping faulty airplane parts that led to the death  of multiple soldiers. Joe Keller defends his partner’s actions to Ann, explaining that Steve made  a mistake but is no murderer. Joe and Kate fear Ann and her brother George have come to  blamethem for Steve’s imprisonment. Chris is troubled as well, suffering survivor’s guilt because he has become financially prosperous while many of his fellow soldiers died. Joe implores Chris  to accept his legacy without reservation—it is the reason Joe has made the choices he has.It is twilight of the same day. Chris is sawing the broken tree, leaving the stump behind. Kate  joins her son, confiding her fear that George might reopen the case against Joe. Sue Bayliss  visits with Ann, asking her to move away once she marries Chris, whose “phony idealism”  impacts her husband. Ann’s brother George arrives after having just visited their father in  prison. George demands that his sister leave with him, arguing that Joe was complicit in the  actions that landed Steve in jail, and that everything the Kellers have is “covered with blood.”  Kate welcomes George, reminiscing about the past and making him forget his convictions  until she slips and uncovers an inconsistency in Joe’s defense. The ensuing argument upsets  Kate, who insists that if Ann and Chris marry, they must all admit Larry is dead and that Joe  is responsible. As the act ends, Chris is left despondent as his father admits he ordered the  actions that resulted in the deaths of twenty-one soldiers.

Act III opens at two in the morning. Kate, as usual, is awake. Chris has driven off after his argument with Joe. Dr. Bayliss sees Kate as he comes home from an emergency, and the two  discuss the complex compromises humans must make between money and honesty. Jim goes  to look for Chris, and Joe joins Kate outside. Kate cannot find the strength to console her  husband or help him decide what to do about turning himself in or losing his son. Defending  his choices to support his family, Joe insists that if there is anything more important than  family, he will “put a bullet in (his) head.” Ann joins the Kellers and demands that Kate free  her remaining son by admitting once and for all that Larry is dead. When Kate refuses, Ann  shares a letter Larry wrote the day he went missing. The Keller’s eldest son crashed his own  plane after learning about his father’s role in the downed aircrafts. Unable to face the implica- tions of his father’s actions and the lack of humanity in the world, Chris is determined to leave town. Realizing that due to his actions, he has lost “all his sons,” his own as well as those who have died as a result of his criminal decision, Joe carries out his threat and ends his own life.