All My Sons Study Guide

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Act 1, Part 3 Summary Ann and Chris come out of the house. Joe, Chris and Keller comment on how beautiful she is. As she comments on how her old house next door has changed, Jim comes out of that house and is introduced to her.

Small talk about Ann's happy memories of her childhood is interrupted by another call from Sue for Jim to take a phone call. As he goes in, Jim offers Ann a piece of advice - never, he says, count her husband's money, even in her mind. After he's gone, Ann suggests that the family go out that night, the way they did when Larry was alive. This leads Kate to triumphantly point out to Joe and Chris that Ann still thinks of Larry. Ann asks why she shouldn't, and then comments on how strange it is to her that Kate.

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This section contains 1,082 words (approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page).

Started writing All My Sons in 1945, inspired by and the true-life story (told to him by his stepmom) of a woman who alerted authorities to her father's wartime wrong-doing (source: Christopher Bigsby, 'Introduction to All My Sons.' Penguin Classics, 2000). The play focuses on the story of a businessman who once narrowly avoided financial ruin by shipping cracked machine parts to the military. He blames his business partner and builds an empire, but eventually his crime comes back to haunt him. The play was produced after the war, won the 1947 Tony, and beat out 's The Iceman Cometh for the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award that same year. You might already know Miller from some of his most famous plays, like,.

All My Sons was one of Miller's earliest plays – and his first commercially successful one – but it already features the ideas of social responsibility that he obsessed with throughout his entire career. What is All My Sons About and Why Should I Care? It's easy to judge Joe Keller. He did something really terrible: making a profit off of faulty airplane parts. Facilitating the deaths of several soldiers. And blaming it all on his feckless partner. You would never, never do anything like that, right?

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But we might make some decisions without thinking through the consequences. Like Joe, we might only be thinking of our friends and our family (or heck, ourselves) when we do certain things.

Driving in traffic, for example. We're tired, we're late, we're hungry, and this punk is getting right in our way. With a number of stressors pressing on us, it's easy to cut him off. It's hard – particularly in a moment of crisis, which is just what Joe Keller faced – to step back and think of everyone else on the road. Some people are really good at remembering the whole world when they make decisions. They are vegetarian, buy local food, compost, recycle, use no fossil fuels, walk dogs at the shelter, and help old ladies cross the street. We admire those people, but we don't always count ourselves among them.

All My Sons Study Guide

So maybe we actually can understand where Joe is coming from. At least a little bit.