All My Sons, by Arthur Miller
Before reading this, I had read two plays by Arthur Miller: The Crucible, which I studied for GCSE Drama, and Death of a Salesman, which I study for A-level English. I thought both were excellent, and so was interested to read some of Miller's other works. Also, I don't think I read enough plays. I'm always dubious as to whether reading a play (as opposed to watching it) is a valid way of experiencing the text. A play is intended to be received by watching it on a stage, and surely therefore one needs all the staging and lighting and the actors' timing of the lines to get the full effect. That said, Miller writes with very precise stage directions and detailed descriptions of the set and staging, so when I was sitting on the sofa reading it, a very clear image of the stage was evoked. I would have loved to see it live - of course - but I still found it very enjoyable, and can still appreciate its cleverness, from my sofa!
'All My Sons' is a drama in three acts, following the Keller family. The Kellers fall apart as the play progresses; they are not only trying to come to terms with the death of their son Larry at war, but they are also trying to cover their guilt after Joe Keller shipped out faulty plane parts to the military, causing the death of twenty-one pilots.
There are several different messages that could be derived from this play. You could certainly look at the theme of money that is threaded throughout - from the opening stage directions the economic value of the house is stated, characters throughout are money-orientated, and Keller's main justification for shipping the faulty engines is that it was a necessary action because he needed the money. Is Miller perhaps challenging the value of economic success, when it is at the expense of human lives? Is he making a statement about the falsity of such materialistic attitudes?
Perhaps he is, but you could also look at the way Miller has explored gender and family roles here. There are frequent references to fathers and sons throughout the play - even in the title. And when Keller refers to getting money out of the engine heads, what he is really referring to is being able to secure the business for his remaining son Chris to inherit. Keller feels it is his duty as a father to set his son up well; perhaps Miller is shining a light on how far people will go to fulfil this duty, and perhaps we are supposed to pity Keller?
But really I don't think either - the money or the family - are at the centre of the play. They are both important, undeniably, but in reality neither the money nor the family are valid justifications for what Keller did. They are justifications that Keller has talked himself into afterwards, in a bid to convince himself that he is innocent. The key part of the title, I think, is not 'sons' but 'all.' Because at its heart, this is a play about the wider consequences of actions, about guilt, denial and social responsibility, and I love the way Miller weaves in these themes.
He shows us these themes in the dialogue, in the way the characters are presented at the start, and what we think of them by the end, in irony and foreshadowing... But since this is a play, intended to be performed on a stage, I'm going to focus here on how Miller has used the set to highlight these themes.
There is an apple tree - a memorial to Larry - in the middle of the stage, which at the very start of the play is struck down by a storm. There seems to be a clear symbolic parallel between the tree and Larry, simply because both are cut off at their prime.
But Larry's death is inextricably linked with Keller's crime, and perhaps therefore the centrality of the tree is a reminder to the audience of the guilt at the heart of the Keller family - perhaps it is a physical representation of the past they cannot escape.
Yet Kate Keller seems to see the tree in a different way: if the tree is a commemoration of Larry's death, its falling could be a sign that he is not actually dead. Her desperation to look for such superstitious signs that her son is still alive is a clear example of the denial and self-deception within the family.
And it could even be construed that there is a link between the tree and the Keller family. The tree's cracking and collapsing could be foreshadowing of the collapse of the family, as they slowly but surely crumble to pieces. Their downfall, by the way, is mirrored in the lighting, which progresses from bright day to dusk to the middle of the night. This not only reflects the mood of the play but also the liveliness of the Kellers, as they are drained of all their vigour and assurance and become more and more subdued.
I get very excited when there are so many different ways one can interpret one symbol. But what's really cool is that all of this meaning, all of the themes, all of those deep, unsettling truths about the characters, can be revealed to us from the set when the curtain rises, before a single word has been spoken. Well done Arthur Miller. Very well done.