By Arthur Miller
Wartime guilt destroys a family
Subject
Themes
A few years after the Second World War, the Keller family lives in comfortable respectability in a small American town. Joe Keller, a self-made manufacturer, sits in his back yard on a Sunday morning reading the newspaper, surrounded by friendly neighbours. An apple tree planted in memory of his son Larry, a pilot missing in action, has blown down overnight in a storm. Joe's wife Kate clings fiercely to the belief that Larry is still alive, commissioning a neighbour to draw up his astrological chart and keeping his room ready for his return.
A few years after the Second World War, the Keller family lives in comfortable respectability in a small American town. Joe Keller, a self-made manufacturer, sits in his back yard on a Sunday morning reading the newspaper, surrounded by friendly neighbours. An apple tree planted in memory of his son…
All My Sons premiered at the Coronet Theatre in New York on 29 January 1947, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Ed Begley as Joe Keller and Arthur Kennedy as Chris. It ran for 328 performances and established Arthur Miller as a major American dramatist, winning the New York Drama Critics' Circle…
Joe Keller's entire defence rests on a single proposition: that the family is the highest moral unit, and that any action taken to protect it is justified. He shipped defective parts because losing the military contract would have threatened his business and, by extension, his sons' inheritance. He…
Every major character in the Keller household practises denial, and the play's dramatic structure is built around the slow, painful process of stripping that denial away. Joe denies his guilt. Kate denies Larry's death. Chris denies his suspicion of his father. Ann denies the moral implications of…
The Second World War casts a long shadow across every relationship and every moral argument in the play. It is the event that created Joe Keller's opportunity for profit, that killed or damaged the young men of the neighbourhood, that gave Chris his sense of moral purpose, and that ultimately…
No character in the Keller household emerges from the play's events without guilt. This is not a drama that divides its cast into the righteous and the wicked. Joe is guilty of a crime that killed young men, but Chris is guilty of complicity in concealing it, Kate is guilty of enforcing the silence…
The Keller household is a portrait of the American Dream in its mid-century form: a self-made man, a comfortable home, a thriving business, a respected position in the community. Joe Keller built all of this from nothing. He is a man "whose judgments must be dredged out of experience and a…
Joe Keller is a self-made businessman nearing sixty, described as a heavy man with the imprint of the machine-shop worker still upon him. He reads, speaks, and listens with what the stage directions call "the terrible concentration of the uneducated man for whom there is still wonder in many…
Chris Keller is the surviving son of Joe and Kate Keller, a war veteran who returned from combat carrying both the guilt of the survivor and a fierce, untested idealism. He is approximately thirty-two years old, earnest, and driven by a sense that the sacrifices made during the war should have…
Kate Keller, referred to throughout the play as "Mother," is the emotional centre of the Keller household. Described as a woman of "uncontrolled inspirations, and an overwhelming capacity for love," she wields a power in the family that is both protective and destructive. Her insistence that Larry…
Ann Deever arrives at the Keller household as a woman who has already made a series of painful choices. She was Larry Keller's fiancee before the war, and after her father Steve was convicted for shipping defective cylinder heads, she severed all contact with him. She has not visited Steve in…
George Deever is a lawyer and the son of Steve Deever, Joe Keller's former business partner who is serving a prison sentence for shipping defective cylinder heads to the military. George arrives at the Keller household in the second act, directly from visiting his father at the Columbus…
Dr Jim Bayliss is the Kellers' next-door neighbour, a general practitioner who serves as the play's most clear-eyed observer. Described as "wry, self-controlled" with "a wisp of sadness that clings to his self-effacing humour," Jim occupies a position both inside and outside the drama. He is close…
On a Sunday morning in the back yard of the Keller home, a quiet American neighbourhood seems perfectly at ease. Joe Keller, a self-made businessman nearing sixty, sits reading the want ads while his neighbour Dr Jim Bayliss shares the paper nearby. The yard is green and comfortable, but one detail…
By evening, Chris has sawn off the fallen apple tree, leaving only its stump in the yard. The removal changes the light in the garden, but it cannot dispel what the tree represented. Kate comes outside anxious and fearful. She begs Chris to protect the family from whatever George Deever may bring…
At two o'clock in the morning, Kate sits rocking ceaselessly on the porch under a bluish moonlight. Chris has driven off into the night after learning the truth about his father, and Kate waits for him to return. Jim Bayliss stops by after a house call and sits with her. He reveals, quietly and…
Joe Keller is a self-made businessman nearing sixty, described as a heavy man with the imprint of the machine-shop worker still upon him. He reads, speaks, and listens with what the stage directions call "the terrible concentration of the uneducated man for whom there is still wonder in many…
Chris Keller is the surviving son of Joe and Kate Keller, a war veteran who returned from combat carrying both the guilt of the survivor and a fierce, untested idealism. He is approximately thirty-two years old, earnest, and driven by a sense that the sacrifices made during the war should have…
Kate Keller, referred to throughout the play as "Mother," is the emotional centre of the Keller household. Described as a woman of "uncontrolled inspirations, and an overwhelming capacity for love," she wields a power in the family that is both protective and destructive. Her insistence that Larry…
Ann Deever arrives at the Keller household as a woman who has already made a series of painful choices. She was Larry Keller's fiancee before the war, and after her father Steve was convicted for shipping defective cylinder heads, she severed all contact with him. She has not visited Steve in…
George Deever is a lawyer and the son of Steve Deever, Joe Keller's former business partner who is serving a prison sentence for shipping defective cylinder heads to the military. George arrives at the Keller household in the second act, directly from visiting his father at the Columbus…
Dr Jim Bayliss is the Kellers' next-door neighbour, a general practitioner who serves as the play's most clear-eyed observer. Described as "wry, self-controlled" with "a wisp of sadness that clings to his self-effacing humour," Jim occupies a position both inside and outside the drama. He is close…
A few years after the Second World War, the Keller family lives in comfortable respectability in a small American town. Joe Keller, a self-made manufacturer, sits in his back yard on a Sunday morning reading the newspaper, surrounded by friendly neighbours. An apple tree planted in memory of his son Larry, a pilot missing in action, has blown down overnight in a storm. Joe's wife Kate clings fiercely to the belief that Larry is still alive, commissioning a neighbour to draw up his astrological chart and keeping his room ready for his return.