Arther Miller's All My Son
A leading American playwright, Arthur
Miller, was born in New York
on 17th October 1915. He has enriched the Broadway stage for several decades.
Although Miller's dramas take place in familiar settings, he has made a reputation
for dealing with contemporary political and social issues.
Miller's parents were of Jewish origin, and belonged to a
family of American Jews. His father (Isadoc Miller) was quite a prosperous
Germanic businessman and manufacturer who owned a factory for some years. But
the great depression of 1931 ruined him financially and he moved to Brooklyn, a
less prosperous part of New York .
The economic hardship in the family were not without their impact on the young
boy, Arthur. He received his early education at Harlem, and later attended High
School at Brooklyn from where he passed his
examination in 1932. His life during school days was not an easy or comfortable
one. Living a life of poverty, Miller had to work as an errand boy doing odd
jobs such as delivering bread for the local bakery before attending classes at
the school.
The economic condition of the family did not allow Miller to
go to some college after passing the high school. Naturally, he had to work for
sometime to earn money to meet the expenses of his college education. Having
saved enough money, he got education in the University
of Michigan (Ann Arbor ), where he took a course in
journalism in 1934. For about eight years after graduating from Michigan , Miller was
engaged in various jobs and also in writing.
In June 1956, Miller divorced his first wife and married a
very glamorous and popular actress, Marilyn Monroe, on June 1956. This marriage
could not last long, and was followed by divorce in 1961. Marilyn Monroe later
committed suicide. This sad event of Miller's life has been dramatised by him
in his play After the Fall. The heroine of his film–script, The
Misfits also resembles Marilyn Monroe. In 1962, Miller had his third
marriage, this time with Miss Ingbory Morath, an Austrian photographer. Miller
wrote a travel journal in Russia
(1969) in collaboration with his wife.
Miller had to face much trouble
because of his social and political beliefs. Although he was not a Communist,
yet he frequently attended their meetings. As Prof. Nissim Ezekiel remarks,
"A writer with strong social and political commitments, Miller frequently
faced difficulties with conservatives and reactionary circles in America ".1
Miller was believed to be and accused of espousing the cause
of communists, and was refused a passport on this ground to visit Drussels to
attend the Beligan premiere of his play, The Crucible in 1955, an
investigation carried on by the New York City Youth Board into his affiliation
with the communists.
Miller began writing plays while a student at the University of Michigan Detroit
by the Federal Theatre Project. In 1944 his The Man Who Had All the Luck
won a prize offered by New York City 's
Theatre Guild.
With his first successes – All My Sons (1947; film,
1948), winner of the Drama Critics Circle Award, and Death of a Salesman
(1949; film, 1952) winner of both the Drama Critics Circle Award and the
Pulitzer Prize, Miller condemned the American ideal of prosperity on the
grounds that few can pursue it without making dangerous moral compromises. Death
of a Salesman, with its expressionistic overtones, remains Miller's most
widely admired work. The keen social conscience evident in these plays has
continued to manifest itself in Miller's writing. In the Tony Award winning The
Crucible (1953), for instance, he wrote of the witch–hunts in Colonial
Salem, Mass and implied a parallel with the congressional investigations into
subversion then in progress. The probing psychological tragedy, A View from
the Bridge (1955) questions the reasonableness of U.S.
immigration laws. After the Fall (1964), which includes a thinly
disguised portrayal of Miller's unhappy marriage to film actress Marilyn
Monroe, offers a second candid consideration of the congressional
investigations in which Miller had been personally involved. Two one–act plays,
Incident at Vichy (1964) and The Price (1968), deal with the
universality of human responsibility and the guilt that often accompanies
survival and success.
Miller's later dramatic works include The Creation of the
World and Other Business (1972). The latter one seemed too openly
didactic for both critics and audiences. The Ride Down Mount
Morgan (1991) opened in London to mixed reviews.
Thus, most of Miller's work is indeed didactic.
Miller's writing outside the theatre have been prolific and
varied. His novel, Focus (1945) is an ironic tale of anti–semitism. The
screenplay for The Misfits (1961) is only one of the several he has
written. In 1969, he wrote in Russia ,
a travel piece with illustrations by his wife. Chinese Encounters (1979)
is another traveller's tale, while Salesman in Beijing (1984) is an
account of the production of his play in Chinese. The Theatre Essays of Arthur
Miller were collected in 1978. In 1987, Miller published Timebends : A Life,
his autobiography.
1.2 An Introduction to the Play : Miller's First
Stage Success
All My Sons made its first
appearance on the stage in January, 1947. With this play, Miller achieved his
first stage triumph. It was the success of this play which created his public
reputation and which secured his economic future. It was at this time, and with
the money obtained from the production of this play, that he bought a
farm–house in a small town of the State of Connecticut . The play ran for 328
performances.
The New York Drama Critics awarded to this play their Circle
Award. The movie rights for making a film on the basis of this play were
purchased by Hollywood ,
the film starring Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson. Miller was invited to
write the script for the film, but he refused and, instead, began working on a
play which he called Plenty Good Times, which was a love–story of
working people in an industrial city. When he found that he could not go on
with this play, he turned to another project which ultimately became his most
famous play, namely Death of a Salesman.
The Play, a Criticism of Capitalism
in its Present Form
In All My Sons, as in his
other early plays, Miller represents capitalism as creating an exploitative
system which denies individual identity. Capitalism, according to Miller,
creates false needs and implies that the satisfaction of those needs would
resolve a longing which is in truth spiritual in origin. Capitalism substitutes
role for identity, and replaces the individual with economic relationships. And
yet in these plays Miller never proposes a fundamental change in the economic
or political structure of American society. He merely insists that a moral
basis for action should be rediscovered, and that there should be a revised
definition of social behaviour. For Miller, the economic depression of the
nineteen–thirties was a crucial event. In his mind, it was the only experience
in American history, apart from the Civil War, which had affected all
Americans. He felt that the world could be changed but not merely through a
redistribution of economic power. In fact, he developed a decidedly non–Marxist
faith in the individual. In All My Sons, Miller creates the possibility
of an America
purged of its corruption.
The Story of the Play in
Outline
All My Sons is a play with a
social thesis. The story was intended by Miller to arouse the social
conscience. Joe Keller, a manufacturer is, in this play, forced to accept
individual social responsibility and consequently to accept his personal guilt
for having sold, on one occasion during World War II, fatally defective
aeroplane parts to government. The defective cylinder heads supplied by him led
to the deaths of twenty–one pilots. At his trial, he had denied the
responsibility, letting his timid partner, Steve Deever, take the blame and the
punishment. Having been exonerated, Joe Keller has successfully re–established
his business and, though his neighbours still believe him to be guilty, they
have apparently accepted him back into their social life. But relief at his
acquittal is diluted by grief at the loss of his son Larry, reported missing in
action and presumed dead. When the play opens, about three and a half years
later, that son's fiance, Annie (daughter of Joe Keller's business partner who
is now in jail), arrives to marry the dead boy's brother, Chris Keller. Annie's
arrival brings about a crisis in the Keller family, and especially for Kate
Keller who has always refused to accept the fact of the death of her son Larry,
and who had so far been seeing Annie's failure to marry anybody else as a proof
of Annie's similar faith in his being still alive. But her acceptance of Larry's
death also forces her to acknowledge some connection between that death and
what she knows to be her husband's guilt. The situation becomes more
complicated when Annie's brother, George arrives to confront Joe Keller with
that guilt. And, although George fails to obtain a confession from Joe Keller,
the planned marriage between Annie and
Chris brings about that confession because Chris's mother plays her
final card in order to prevent the marriage which could mean the end of her
belief and her hope in Larry's continued survival. She reveals her husband's
guilt to her son Chris. But she and her husband are finally defeated by a
letter which Annie now reveals. In this letter the missing son Larry had
announced his intention to commit suicide because of his father's dishonest
action in having supplied defective equipment to the Air Force. Finding himself
compelled to accept the responsibility for his dishonest action, Joe Keller
shoots himself.
The
Principal Characters in the Play
Leaving aside the subsidiary
characters, the play introduces us to two families, the Keller family, and the
Deever family. Joe Keller is the head of the Keller family; Kate is his wife;
and Chris his surviving son, the other son, Larry by name, having been reported
missing during the war, is presumed as dead. The head of the Deever family,
namely Steve Deever, is in jail; and he does not make a personal appearance
anywhere in the play. From this family Annie Deever, the daughter, and George
Deever, the son, have important roles in the action of the play. Joe Keller is
the guilty man who had, by means of a distortion of the facts and by means of a
total lie in the court, got himself acquitted of the responsibility for having
supplied defective engine heads to the American Air Force. His wife, Kate
Keller, knows her husband's guilt, but the son Chris does not. When George
Deever exposes Joe Keller's secret, Chris, who has a delicate conscience,
begins to feel most miserable. Chris would now like his father to go to jail
and, in fact, he gets ready to take his father to the police to make a
confession. However, at this point Joe Keller shoots himself. Annie is the girl
who was engaged to marry Larry Keller and who possesses incontrovertible
evidence of Larry's death. She is now willing to marry the dead Larry's younger
brother, Chris. Kate Keller is opposed to her son Chris's proposed marriage
with Annie; but, after Joe Keller commits suicide, the way is cleared for Chris
and Annie to get married. This last act is, however, left to our imagination
because the play ends with both Chris and Kate sobbing over Joe Keller's
suicide.
Miller's Own Comments on the Play
Miller's own
comments on this play are worthy of notice. He tells us that the play begins in
an atmosphere of undisturbed normality and that its first Act was designed by
him to be a slow affair. In fact, says Miller, he had even tried to make the
start of the play somewhat boring, his object being to horrify the audience
when the first hint of the crime committed by Joe Keller is dropped. The
horror, according to Miller, would result from the contrast between the
serenity of the civilization on view and the threat to that civilization from
the stirrings of the human conscience. Miller then goes on to say that the
crime in the play is not one which is about to be committed but one which had
been committed long ago. The damage, which the crime could do, has already been
done, and been done irreparably. The only thing, which now remains to be dealt
with, is the conscience of Joe Keller, and also the conscience of his son Chris
in the face of what he has come to know about his father. The structure of the
play, says Miller, was designed by him to bring a character into the direct
path of the consequences of his misdeed. This play may, therefore, be regarded
as a moral play. Miller further says. Joe Keller is a threat to society and, in
this sense, the play is a social play. The "socialness" of the play
does not reside in its treatment of the crime of selling defective equipment to
a nation at war. The "socialness" lies in the fact that the crime is
to be seen as having its roots in a certain relationship of the individual to
society, and to a certain indoctrination which that individual embodies.
The Germ of the Play, According to Miller
Miller tells us also how this play
originated. During an idle chat in his house, a pious lady visitor told him of
a family in her neighbourhood which had been destroyed when the daughter handed
over her father to the police on discovering that he had been selling faulty
machinery to the army. World War II, says Miller, was at that time raging in
all its fury. By the time that lady had finished her account, Miller had, in
his imagination, changed the daughter into a son, and the climax of the second
Act had taken a full and clear shape in his mind. The crisis in the second Act
of All My Sons consists in the revelation of the odiousness and
obnoxiousness of an anti–social action (The anti–social action, as already
indicated, is the supply by Joe Keller of defective cylinder heads to the Air
Force).
The Play, as Viewed by Miller Retrospectively
Looking at the
play retrospectively, Miller writes that he thinks now that the
straightforwardness of All My Sons form was in some part due to the
relatively sharp definition of the social aspects of the problem it death with.
It was conceived in war–time and begun in war–time; the spectacle of human
sacrifice in contrast with aggrandisement is a sharp and heart–breaking one. At
a time when all public voices were announcing the arrival of that great day
when industry and labour were one, his personal experience was daily
demonstrating that beneath the slogans very little had changed. In this sense
the play was a response to what he felt "in the air". It was an unveiling
of what he believed everybody knew and nobody publicly said. At the same time,
however, he believed he was bringing news, and it was news which he half
expected would be denied as truth.
When, in effect, it was accepted, he was gratified, but a
little surprised. The success of a play, especially one's first success, is
somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened from the other
side. One may fall on one's face or not, but certainly a new room is opened
that was always secured shut until then. For him, the experience was
invigorating. It suddenly seemed that the audience was a mass of blood
relations and he sensed a warmth in the world that had not been there before.
It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more. The audience sat
in silence before the unwinding of All My Sons and gasped when they
should have, and he tasted that power which is reserved for playwrights.
As well, the production of the play was an introduction to
the acting art and its awesome potentials. He wanted to use more of what lay in
actors to be used. To me, the most incredible spectacle of this first
successful production was the silence it
enforced. It seemed then that the stage was as wide and free and towering and
laughingly inventive as the human mind itself, and he wanted to press closer
towards its distant edges. A success places one among friends. The world is
friendly, the audience is friendly, and that is good. It also reveals, even
more starkly than a failure – for a failure is always ill–defined – what
remains undone.
Reasons for the Excellence of This Play
All My Sons is frankly and
evidently a didactic play with a strong
moral impulse behind it. But its moral is conveyed to us in such a way that the
didactic purpose does not obtrude upon us in any blatant or pompous manner. In
fact, the play is thoroughly enjoyable despite its serious and moral purpose.
It is a play which combines instruction with entertainment. There is plenty of
tension in the play to give it a dramatic quality, and there is plenty of
humour in it too to relieve the tension. The incidental dialogue, in which the
subsidiary characters have a major share, contributes its own share to the
entertainment value of the play as also to its realistic quality. The
characters have all been drawn with a strong sense of realism, and the plot
moves forward naturally and convincingly as also briskly. And what is more, the
play has an appeal for the young and the elderly alike, for mothers, for
fathers, for sons, for daughters, for husbands, for wives, in peace time as
well as in times of war.
1.3 Form
and Structure of
'All My Sons'
Miller may be said to be more
interested in the portrayal of social reality and the characters who may be
relevant to this portrayal. His plays are more remarkable for their
characterisation and their treatment of social and moral issues than for the
element of action or structure in them. Miller was more concerned with the
proper development of his characters than that of his plots. His plots may be
regarded as of secondary importance as compared with his characterisation or
the treatment of the theme related to the relationship of the individual and
society. However, he has not entirely ignored the structure of his plays; he
has tried to build up properly organised structures. He has given a proper form
to his plays even while concentrating on the expression of his ideas through
various characters.
The form and structure of
Miller's play All My Sons can hardly be overpraised. Its structure is as
remarkable as its theme and its characters. The play is marked by an organic
unity, and has a well–knit structure. It deals with its chief theme of the
relationship of the individual with his society and his fellows, and with the
crisis and conflicts arising therein. The characters, background, and situation
are presented in it realistically. The chief theme and other subsidiary themes
have been dealt with through a well–organised dramatic form. Being a play
belonging to the classical tradition, it presents a real story through a
tightly knit plot and structure. Joe Keller's committing the guilt of supplying
defective equipment, his awareness of this guilt, the confrontation of his
responsibility in this guilt caused by his son, the acknowledgement that all
youngmen were his sons, and his suicide,
are the various actions that follow one another in a logical sequence. The plot
is quite simple, and has almost no digression or sub–plots. The story is
unfolded through the speech and interaction of characters like Joe Keller, Chris,
Kate, Ann and George. Short, simple and informative dialogues are employed to
tell the story and present the action in an artless manner. Miller tells us :
My intention in this play was to be as
untheatrical as possible. To that end any metaphor, any image, any figure of
speech, however creditable to me, was removed if it even slightly brought to
consciousness the hand of a writer. So far as was possible nothing was to be
permitted to interfere with its artlessness.2
All My Sons is the most
classical of Miller's plays in the sense that the three unities of time, place
and action as enunciated by Aristotle, have amply been observed in it. The
unity of time can be found in the fact that the duration of the whole play
consists of only 18 hours from Sunday morning to the early hours of Monday, and
all the events and actions of the play occur during this time. The unity of
place can be seen in the fact that the place of action in the entire play is
confined to the backyard of Joe Keller's home in which live Joe Keller (60) an
industrialist, his wife Kate ('early fifties') and their son Chris (32). Their
neighbours, involved with the Kellers in some ways, as family friends, are Dr.
Jim Bayliss (40) and his wife Sue ('rounding forty'), and Frank Lubey (32) and
his wife Lydia
(27). Bert, the eight–year–old son of Jim and Sue, appears briefly in the first
act. The unity of action consists in the fact that there is one single
predominant action in the play, i.e. Joe Keller's evasion of his responsibility
in the supply of defective equipment which has its impact on the lives of
various characters, and the consequences of which cause and constitute the
tragedy of the play, in the form of the suicide of Joe Keller, the guilty man.
In the Keller home when the play
begins is Ann Deever (26) who was engaged to Larry Keller, Chris' brother.
Larry fought as a pilot in the Second World War and was reported missing. It is
presumed by everybody that he is dead, except by his mother, Kate, who insists
on believing that Larry will some day return. The complex psychological motives
at the root of this illusion, play a major role in the development of the plot.
Chris and Ann intend to marry. Kate objects on the ground that it would mean
believing that Larry is dead.
Ann's father, Steve, was
Keller's partner in a factory turning out cylinder heads for the Army Air Force
during the war. A batch of these proved to be defectively manufactured but they
were passed by the factory, and caused the death of twenty–one American pilots.
There was a court case against the partners and both were convicted, but in the
appeal that followed Keller was apparently given the benefit of the doubt. At
any rate, he has allowed to go while Steve, Ann's father, was sent to jail
where he is at the time the play opens.
Steve held that Keller had been told of the defective
cylinder heads and had approved of passing them on for use. Keller had denied
this in court. The neighbours were
inclined to believe that he was guilty, but Keller built up his business again
and is on good terms with them. He tries to persuade himself that they have
forgotten the story, but they haven't.
Ann believes and so does her brother George that their father
knowingly shipped out parts that would crash an airplane. Angry and ashamed, they
have abandoned him in jail. Keller attempts to explain to Ann the conditions in
which wartime production was done and defends his former partner from any
charge worse than a mistaken decision. Chris describes to Ann, in discussing
their proposed marriage, his frustration on finding that life after the war was
the same as it had been before - "that rat–race again ... nobody was
changed at all". (36) It meant that those killed in the war had sacrificed
themselves in vain. The values of co–operation and mutual responsibility which
they had built up by their actions had been lost, and people behaved as if the
war had been something like a 'bus accident'.
When Chris and Ann formally announce their intention of
getting married, there is a trunk–call from George, Ann's brother, now a
lawyer. The call is from Columbus (Ohio ) where their father
is serving his sentence in jail. Keller shows his nervousness at this and so
does his wife. From their conversation we suspect that both have an inkling of
what is about to happen : the exposure of Keller's complicity in the crime for
which his partner is in jail.
Before George appears on the scene, in the second act, Ann
learns from Sue that the neighbours still believe Keller to be guilty. Chris
says, "Do you think I could forgive him if he'd done that thing"?
(48) George comes to try to break up the marriage between Chris and Ann. He
angrily tells them the story of the time when the defective cylinder heads were
noticed by his father. George heard the story from his father whom he had, on
an impulse, visited in jail, to inform him of the forthcoming marriage between
Chris and Ann. George believes his father's story : that Keller had been
informed of the defectives and had instructed Steve on the phone "to weld,
cover up the cracks in any way he could, and ship them out". (57) Keller
had promised to take the responsibility.
Keller had not gone to the factory that day on the pretext
that he had a cold. In the court case, his alibi was not believed but in the
appeal it was; so Steve was sentenced and Keller set free. There is a
confrontation with Keller, and for a time George's faith in his father's
version of the event is shaken by Keller's sympathetic and plausible
interpretation of it. But the truth comes out eventually. Keller justifies his
criminal conduct and says his subsequent lies were for the sake of Chris. Chris
rejects that way of seeing it.
In Act 3 we learn that Chris had driven away after the
argument with his father and the collapse of his world. Kate wants Keller to
admit to Chris that he had done a 'terrible thing' and was ready to pay for it.
She thinks that alone would bring Chris back to them. Keller feels this is
outrageous, since everything he had done was for the family, or so he imagines.
Kate points out that for Chris there's something larger than the family.
Ann enters when this argument is going on, and asks Kate to
accept Larry's death so that Chris won't feel guilty about marrying her. Kate
refuses. She insists that Larry may still be alive. Chris returns and announces
his intention of going away for ever, without Ann. It is clear to Keller that
his wife and son wish him to go to jail. Keller protests, "Half the goddam country is gotta go if
I go". (87) The implication is that criminal acts of the sort he had
committed were quite common during the war, and were done for money. Ann hands
over a letter Larry had written her on the day he died. Larry had read in the
newspapers about Keller and Steve being convicted. "I can't bear to live
any more", he had written,
..."I'm going out on a mission in a few minutes. They'll probably report
me missing". (88)
Keller hears Chris read out the letter and makes a move that suggests he wants to give himself
up and confess his guilt. Kate tries to dissuade him :
Mother. Larry was your son too, wasn't he ? You know
he'd never tell you to do this.
Keller's reply is the major insight
of the play and gives it its title.
Keller. Sure he
was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess, they were, I
guess they were.
He goes into the house and a shot is
heard. Kate says to Chris :
Mother. Don't take it on yourself. Forget
now. Live. (89-90)
The action in the play is
developed through various stages comprising the beginning, the middle and the
end. These stages are found in the plots of classical plays – that may be said
to be found in the three Acts of the play respectively. The first Act contains
the exposition of the situation, the second Act exhibits the complication and
climax, and the third Act shows the action leading to the tragic end. Joe
Keller's act of evading his responsibility in the decision to supply the
defective equipment which causes his partner to go to prison, forms the central
event of the play. The depiction of this event is preceded by the depiction of
the situation and circumstances leading to it, through the speech of Joe Keller
in the first Act. The consequences of the action concerned with this event are
presented in the third Act. Thus, the playwright has built up a unified structure
to tell his story. He presents various issues plainly so as to enable even a
common reader to understand the ideas or meaning that are sought to be conveyed
by him. As Nissim Ezekiel points out,
Every situation in a play by Miller develops
till the issues it raises are unambiguously resolved. We are not left to figure
out for ourselves the meaning and implications of the play. We know, more or
less precisely, what the author has in mind. 3
All My Sons also reveals this
quality of Miller's art of playwrighting.
The beginning
of the play is very slow, and the action and the situation are presented by
Miller in a leisurely manner. As Miller himself tells us,
The play begins in an atmosphere of
undisturbed normality. Its first act was later called slow, but it was designed
to be slow. It was made so that even boredom might threaten, so that when the
first intimation of the crime is dropped a genuine horror might begin to move
into the heart of the audience, a horror born of the contrast between the placidity
of the civilization on view and the threat to it that a rage of conscience
could create. 4
Gradually, as the action develops,
the play gains speed and momentum, and events begin to take place at a faster
pace. The play heads towards an inevitable and convincing end which consists of
the suicide by Joe Keller. This suicide is a form of a self–punishment that Joe
inflicts on himself for his guilt. The end makes Joe Keller a tragic figure
which he could not have become if he had been allowed by the writer to go
scot–free, as he seemed to be in the beginning of the play.
Keller's suicide is impelled by his awareness of his moral
responsibility in the guilt, and is convincing both from the moral as well as
the psychological points of view. Keller has to acknowledge that all youngmen
fighting in the war were his sons, and realize that his crime in causing their
death cannot be condoned. Morally speaking, he deserves no pity or forgiveness,
to be able to continue to live in this world, and has to put an end to his
life. Speaking psychologically, Joe Keller is so disturbed and burdened by the
consciousness of his guilt that with the little sense of integrity or dignity
he may have been left with, he can find suicide to be the only alternative
implying a way out of his predicament. His suicide seems to be the only
convincing device for bringing about the tragic end of the play.
Thus, All My Sons is a nicely built play with a
well–knit structure through which its action, characters and events are
presented in a dramatically effective and appealing manner. The form of the play is immensely suited to the
conveyance of Miller's ideas and the presentation of the moral and
psychological conflict inherent in the situation. We may conclude this
discussion of the form and the structure of All My Sons by quoting his
own remarks in this matter : he writes -
The form of All My Sons is a
reflection and an expression of several forces, of only some of which I was
conscious. I desired above all to write rationally, to write so that I could
tell the story of the play to even an unlettered person and spark a look of
recognition on his face ... the only other course I had was the one I took - to
seek cause and effect, hard actions, facts, the geometry of relationships, and
to hold back any tendency to express an idea in itself unless it was literally
forced out of a character's mouth; in other words, to let wonder rise up like a
mist, a gas, a vapour from the gradual and remorseless crush of factual and
psychological conflict.5
Joe Keller and Steve Deever were partners in a manufacturing
firm. They were also neighbours because they lived in the same locality, quite
close to each other. During the war they had got a contract from the Air Force
to supply cylinder heads for the military aircraft. They had, accordingly, been
supplying cylinder heads to the Air Force. On one occasion it so happened that
a whole batch of cylinder heads, produced by them, were found to have developed
cracks. It was evidently undesirable for the manufacturers to despatch those
cylinder heads to the authorities. At that particular time, Joe Keller was at
home and not in the factory; and it was Steve Deever who had discovered the
cracks in the cylinder heads. Steve Deever telephoned to Joe Keller to inform him
about the defect which had appeared in the cylinder heads. Joe Keller should
have stopped Steve Deever from sending the defective cylinder heads to the
military authorities. Left to himself, Steve Deever would most probably have
withheld the defective cylinder heads. But Joe Keller felt that withholding
those cylinder heads would mean a huge financial loss for the firm and,
besides, there would be a lot of delay in manufacturing more cylinder heads
while the authorities were sending urgent messages to the manufacturers to
expedite the supply of cylinder heads. Joe Keller therefore asked Steve Deever
on the telephone to weld the cracks in the cylinder heads, and then to despatch
those cylinder heads to the authorities. Steve Deever asked if what would be the
right course of action. Joe Keller replied that, as he was down with flu, he
was unable to come personally to the factory but that he would take full
responsibility for the supply of those cylinder heads after they had been
repaired. In accordance with Joe Keller's instructions, Steve Deever despatched
the defective cylinder heads to the army authorities even though both he and
Joe Keller knew in their hearts that defective engine heads would put the lives
of the air pilots in danger.
The defective cylinder heads actually proved dangerous.
Aeroplanes fitted with those cylinder heads started crashing and, in a few
days, as many as twenty–one aeroplanes had crashed and their pilots been
killed. The authorities immediately carried out an inspection and came to the
conclusion that the manufacturers had supplied defective cylinder heads. A
prosecution was launched against both partners. In the court Steve Deever gave
a full and truthful account of what had happened. But Joe Keller denied having
given any instructions to Steve Deever on the telephone with regard to the
defective cylinder heads. The court convicted both the partners and held them
equally guilty. But Joe Keller filed an appeal against his conviction and his
version of events, which had been disbelieved by the trial court, was accepted
by the court of appeal; and he was therefore acquitted. In the court of appeal,
Joe Keller had repeated his former plea, namely that he had nothing at all to
do with the despatch of the defective cylinder heads because he had been ill on
the day on which those cylinder heads had been despatched, and because he had
not even gone to the factory on that particular day. Steve Deever's statement,
that Joe Keller had given him telephonic instructions, was completely denied by
Joe Keller. Thus, while Joe Keller had saved his skin, Steve Deever was
sentenced to a long imprisonment. When the war ended, Joe Keller started
manufacturing such items as pressure–cookers and washing–machines because
military equipment was no longer needed and because, in any case, this
particular firm would not have been given any further contracts for the supply
of military equipment.
All these incidents had occurred during the war. About three
and a half years have now passed since the end of the war. The play opens at
this point of time. Joe Keller is a prosperous manufacturer running his
business comfortably and continuing to live in the same town and in the same
house. The Deever family, which also used to live close to Joe Keller's house,
had vacated the house after Steve Deever's imprisonment. Steve Deever's wife,
his son George, and his daughter Annie had shifted to New York and had been living there ever
since the time of the imprisonment of Steve Deever. George and Annie had broken
off their relationship with their father because of his public disgrace and
because of his conviction on a charge of fraud. They have not even been on
terms of correspondence with him. While they are living in New
York , Steve has been spending his days in a prison in the town of Columbus .
During the war all men of a certain age–group had been
required to report themselves to the army authorities for recruitment in the
army because every American, according to the laws of the land, is required to
serve in the army during a war if necessary. Both Joe Keller's sons, Larry and
Chris, had gone to fight in the war, and so had Steve Deever's son, George,
Larry, who had joined the army as an air pilot, had been reported as missing
and had been presumed to be dead. Chris had distinguished himself as an army
officer and had returned home, safe and sound. Likewise, George had earned
several medals for bravery on the battlefield, and he too had returned home,
safe and sound. After the war, George had studied law and, when the play opens,
he is already a lawyer and has started practising as one in New York . Chris has joined his father in the
factory. Joe Keller's elder son, Larry, had been in love with Steve Deever's
daughter, Annie, and she had returned his love. In fact, Larry and Annie were
engaged to each other and, if Larry had returned safe from the war, they would
have got married. But, as Larry had been presumed to be dead, Annie has
accepted the fact. Now it is Chris who wants to marry. Annie because he too had
been in love with her. As Larry is no more in this world, Annie has agreed to
marry Chris. A very important fact which has to be noted here is that, although
everybody else believes Larry to be dead, Larry's mother, Kate Keller, persists
in believing that Larry is alive somewhere and that one day he would return
home. As she clings obstinately to this belief of hers, her husband Joe Keller
and her son Chris do not make any special efforts to remove this notion from
her head.
Although Kate Keller continues to believe that Larry is alive
somewhere and that he would come back home one day, Chris and Joe had planted
an apple–tree in the back–yard of their house as a kind of memorial to Larry.
It is Sunday morning when the curtain rises (that is, when the action of the
play begins). During the night a furious wind had been blowing and, as a result
of the fury of the wind, the apple–tree had got broken. The upper part of the
apple–tree now lies on the ground, while the stump stands in its place. Joe
Keller feels that the sight of the broken tree would grieve his wife, Kate. But
he does not know that Kate has already seen the broken tree and that she has
been weeping over it. Here, of course, we find a contradiction. On the one hand
Kate believes her son Larry to be alive; and, on the other, she begins to weep
when she finds the memorial to Larry having been damaged by the wind. But Kate
herself finds a certain meaning in the accident of the apple–tree having been
damaged by the wind. During the same night, Annie had come from New York to the Keller
home in response to an invitation from Chris. As already pointed out, Chris
wants to marry Annie, and Annie is willing to marry him. However, when Chris
tells his father of his intention to marry Annie, Joe Keller says that Chris's
mother would not agree to this marriage because Chris's mother believes Larry
to be still alive and because Annie was engaged to marry Larry. Annie's arrival
has already created a suspicion in Kate's mind and, when she learns of Chris's
intention to marry the girl, she tells her husband that she would not allow
Chris to marry her. Kate goes so far as to say to her husband that Annie
herself would not agree to marry Chris because Annie too believes that Larry is
still alive. However, here Kate is thoroughly mistaken because, as already
pointed out above, Annie is perfectly willing to marry Chris and because Annie
is fully convinced that Larry is dead. Kate, in her talk with her husband,
reinforces her argument by saying that Annie had come on the very night that
the apple–tree had been damaged by the wind. Besides, Annie has been given the
same room to sleep in, which used to be Larry's room. Kate finds a hidden
meaning in these coincidences.
There is now a confrontation between Chris and his mother
Kate. Annie too joins the discussion which takes place. Both Chris and Annie
now express their firm view that Larry is dead, but Kate still expresses the
view that Larry is alive. Kate says that certain things have to happen and that
certain other things can never happen. The sun has to rise, and it therefore
rises. The rising of the sun everyday shows that there is a God in this world.
But there are certain things which can never happen, and the death of Larry is
one such event, says Kate.
It is now fully agreed between Chris and Annie that they
would get married. Chris kisses Annie for the first time and feels very happy
about it. At the same time he experiences a certain embarrassment in his
successful love for Annie. He tells Annie that his experience in the course of
the war had made him believe that there is such a thing in this world as human
fellowship or human comradeship. During the war, men had made sacrifices for
their country, and men had stood by one another. But now, after the war is
over, Chris finds that the world remains unchanged and that the people are as
selfish, greedy, and money–minded as they used to be before. Chris goes on to
say that he finds that the same competitive struggle is going on among the
people, and that the same mad race is continuing. After witnessing this state
of affairs he feels guilty when he signs a cheque to draw money from a bank or
when he looks at his new car, or when he thinks of marrying Annie. What he
means to say is that he does not think himself entitled to any of the comforts,
luxuries, and privileges which are available to him. He means that he has a
sense of guilt about enjoying those privileges when the people in general spend
their lives, trying to do the maximum damage to one another's material
interests. However, Annie tries to soothe Chris's feelings, and asks him to
shed his sense of guilt. Chris then feels cheerful and tells Annie that he
would earn a lot of money for her sake, and that he would, in fact, make a
fortune for her.
Just then there is a telephone call from George for Annie.
Annie is surprised to learn that George had gone to see their father in prison
that very morning, and that George is now on the telephone to speak to her.
George tells her on the telephone that he is still in Columbus where he has seen his father for the
first time since he was imprisoned. He also tells her that he is now coming
over to meet the Keller family. Everybody is surprised to learn that George is
coming. In fact, Kate feels deeply perturbed by the forthcoming visit of
George. She begins to think that George might be wanting to re–open the whole
case about the supply of defective cylinder heads to the Air–Force and about
Joe Keller having been exonerated. The fact is that Kate also knows her
husband's guilt. She knows that Keller had told Steve on the telephone that he
(Keller) would take the whole responsibility for the supply of those defective
cylinder heads. She therefore now thinks that George might try to create
trouble for Joe Keller.
George now arrives from Columbus
where he had met his father in prison that very morning. His father had told
him certain facts which had surprised him and which have brought him to this
place. George's father had told him the real facts about the case in which he
had been convicted and Keller had been exonerated. Having learnt from his
father that the actual responsibility for the supply of the defective cylinder
heads what that of Keller, George is now determined to take up the matter with
the Keller family and to expose Keller who, after having instructed Steve
Deever to despatch the defective cylinder heads to the army authorities and
having told Steve that he would take full responsibility for the supply of
those cylinder heads, had subsequently declared in the court that it was his
partner, Steve Deever, who was responsible for the supply of the defective
equipment, and that he (Keller) had nothing to do with the affair because on
the day of the despatch of that equipment he (Keller) was lying sick at his
residence. George now take up the matter with the Keller family, and he
discovers the weak point in Keller's position when Kate happens to say that her
husband had never been sick during the last many years. George asks how, then,
Keller had declared in the open court that he was lying sick at his residence
on the day when the defective cylinder heads had been despatched to the army
authorities. Now Chris, who had previously believed his father to be absolutely
innocent in the whole affair, also becomes suspicious. As for George, he now
feels convinced of Keller's guilt and therefore fully convinced of his own
father's innocence. He now tells his sister Annie that he would not allow her
to marry Chris. He tells Annie that he cannot allow her to marry the son of the
man who had ruined her father and taken away everything which his father had
possessed. Annie, however, is not convinced by her brother's arguments and asks
him to leave her to decide her own future.
Kate wants that Annie should go
away with her brother because Kate does not want Annie to marry Chris. Kate
still believes that Larry is alive, and she therefore wants that Annie should
wait for Larry's return. Kate desires that Annie should marry Larry to whom she
had been engaged. When Chris resists his mother's wish in this matter on the
ground of his belief that Larry is dead, Kate says that, in the first place,
Larry is alive and that, in the second place, Larry, if dead, had been killed
by his father. As Kate is of the firm view that a son cannot be killed by his
father, so Larry must be alive. Such is Kate's logic. Keller says that Larry
could not have been killed through engine failure because his plane was not
equipped with any of the cylinder heads which his factory had supplied to the
Air Force. Here Chris's suspicion about his father's role in the supply of
defective cylinder heads is confirmed; and he asks if Keller was responsible
for the deaths of the other pilots if
not for the death of his son Larry. Keller replies that Kate is entirely
mistaken in her belief that he had anything to do with the deaths of the other
air pilots or with the death of his own son, Larry. But now Chris has begun to
think that his father is telling lies and that his father is actually
responsible for what had happened to those air pilots who had got killed.
Keller then has no alternative but to come out with the truth. He admits his
responsibility in the matter and says that, if those defective cylinder heads
had not been despatched, and if they had been discarded as useless, the factory
would have been ruined, and he would have become bankrupt. He says that it was
absolutely essential that the factory should continue its operations and that
those defective cylinder heads should be repaired and then supplied. He had, of
course, visualized the possibility that the defective cylinder heads might,
even after repairs, cause the aeroplanes to crash. Chris feels shocked to hear
his father's defence of himself and asks in which kind of world his father
lives. He bitterly scolds his father for having endangered the lives of so many
air pilots and having caused their deaths by his folly. Chris now feels utterly
miserable, and faces an agonizing dilemma. He does not know what he ought to do
under the circumstances.
After meditating upon his position Chris now decides to leave
his parents and his home and go somewhere else to take up a job and earn his
own living. He thinks that it would be a crime on his part to continue living
on the profits of his father's business which had been thriving on his father's
fraud in having supplied defective cylinder heads to the Air Force during the
war. When Annie offers to go with him, he says that he cannot take her with him
because she would never forget his father's guilt and would therefore never
enjoy any peace of mind in his (Chris's) company. Annie thereupon says that
Chris should do what his sense of duty demands. But Kate's objection to Annie's
marrying Chris still remains because Kate has not ceased to believe that Larry
is still alive and would one day come back. Now Annie produces undeniable
evidence of Larry being dead. She shows Kate a letter which she had received
from Larry and which Larry had written to her on the last day of his life. In
this letter, Larry had written that he had come to know from newspaper reports
that his father and Annie's father had been convicted of a charge of having
deliberately supplied defective cylinder heads which had then been responsible
for the deaths of a large number of air pilots. Larry had further written that
he had begun to feel so ashamed of his father's criminal action that he did not
wish to live any longer in this world. He had then written in the same letter
that he would be flying that day on a special mission and that, in the course
of that flight, he would allow his aeroplane to crash in order to end his life.
Kate feels deeply shocked to go through this letter written by Larry to Annie.
Now Kate can no longer maintain that Larry is still alive and would come back
one day.
When Keller hears the contents of this letter, he too feels
ashamed because Larry's suicide was due to Larry's sense of shame at his
father's action in having supplied defective cylinder heads to the Air Force
and thus causing the deaths of as many as twenty–one air pilots. Keller's
argument that he had done everything for the sake of his family and that even
his action in supplying defective cylinder heads to the Air Force had been due
to his anxiety not to ruin his family financially now no longer holds good even
in his own eyes. Chris now asks his father what he proposes to do in the light
of Larry's letter. Keller says that he understands what Chris wants him to do.
He then asks Chris to get the car ready so that Chris can take him to the
police headquarters where he would admit his guilt and would offer himself for
a retrial. Keller then goes into the house to get dressed. Kate tries her
utmost to stop both Chris and Keller from going to the police, but Chris says
that nothing would now stop either him or his father from taking that step.
Just then a shot is heard from inside the house. Evidently Keller, instead of
accompanying Chris to the police headquarters, has killed himself. Thus Keller
has himself passed a sentence of death against himself, and has carried out
that sentence also. Chris tells his mother that it was not his intention that
his father should kill himself. His mother says that Chris should not blame
himself for his father's suicide but should now start a new life. Here the play
ends but it is of course understood that Chris would now start a new life with
Annie.
Notes
1 Arthur,
Miller, All My Sons, ed. Nissim Ezekiel (Madras : Oxford University
Press, 1972) 6.
2 Arthur, Miller, Collected
Plays, Indian edn. (New Delhi : Allied Publishers, 1973) 8.
3 Arthur, Miller, All My Sons,
ed. Nissim Ezekiel (Madras : Oxford University Press, 1972) 91–92.
4 A. Robert, Martin, The
Creative Experience of Arthur Miller : An Interview, Educational Theatre
Journal, 21 Oct. 1969.
5 A. Robert, Martin, rev. of
Arthur Miller : Tragedy and Commitment, Michigan
Quack Review, 8 Sept. 1969 : 25.
All the textual quotations have
been taken from Arthur Miller,
All My Sons, ed. Nissim Ezekiel (Madras : Oxford University
Press, 1972).
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