all my sons

 All My Sons Summary

Joe Keller

Middle aged and prosperous, Joe Keller is a family man whose world does not extend beyond the borders of his front yard or the gate around his factory. He is not a greedy, conniving caricature of capitalism, but rather a good-natured and loving man of little education, whose myopic perspective on his world stems from a devotion to his family and an education in a society that encourages generally antisocial behavior. American rugged individualism alienated Keller, whose past misdeeds haunt the future of his family.

Kate Keller (Mother)

Though she has a successful husband and a loving son, Mother cannot abandon the memory of her other son, who was lost in the war. Her delusions about Larry's disappearance and her vehement self-denial are symptomatic of greater issues than just a grief-stricken mother's inability to cope with the loss of a child. Nervous and suspicious, Mother has taken on the burden of her husband's secret while he presents the face of an untroubled conscience to the world, while she suffers from headaches and nightmares. Her fantasies about Larry are constructed from a sense of self-preservation, and the flimsy basis for her hopes is threatened any time someone who loved Larry intimates that he or she may not share Kate's confidence in his return.

Chris Keller

Returning from the war as a hero, Chris found the day-to-day provincialism of his old life stifling. But Chris is a family man, and he is devoted to his parents. He is uncomfortable with the success his father's business found during the war, when so many of his comrades died pointlessly. He redirects his discomfort into an idealism and an attitude of social awareness that is foreign to his family environment. Others perceive Chris's idealism as oppressive, asking sacrifices of others that Chris himself does not make as he lives comfortably (if guiltily) on his father's dime.

Larry Keller

Although he has been dead for some years by the start of the play, Larry is as much a character in the play as anyone who actually appears on stage. His disappearance haunts his family through his mother's superstitious belief in his return, as well as through his brother's wary but measured rejection of Larry's claim on his childhood sweetheart. Larry is constantly compared to Chris throughout the play, ostensibly for the purpose of better defining the character of Chris, but in the end we learn that Larry's own character had quite an effect on the story. Larry is portrayed by his father as the more sensible and practical of his sons, the one with a head for business who would understand his father's arguments. Larry, not Chris, possessed the stronger sense of honor and connectedness, and Larry sacrificed himself in penance for his father's misdeeds.

Ann Deever

The beautiful Ann has not become attached to a new man since her beau Larry died in the war, but this is not through lack of suitors. Ann is mired in the past, though she has not been waiting for Larry to return. Rather, she has waited for his brother Chris to step forward and take Larry's place in her heart. She is an honest, down-to-earth girl, and she is emboldened by the strength of certain of her convictions. Sharing Chris's idealism and righteousness, she has shunned her father for his crimes during the war, and she fully understands his assertion that if he had any suspicions of his own father, he could not live with himself. Ann and her brother work to establish "appropriate" reactions to a father's wartime racketeering.

George Deever

George serves a mostly functional role in the story of the Keller family. His arrival in the second act is a catalyst for a situation that was on edge from long-established tensions. His disdain is for the crime, not for the man, and now that he has been newly convinced of his father's innocence, he is here to rescue his sister from entering the family of the man he believes is actually guilty. Yet George is easily disarmed by Keller's good humor, and his own convictions about his father's innocence are almost undermined by his awareness of his father's other faults and weaknesses.

Dr. Jim Bayliss

The neighborhood doctor, Jim is a good man who believes in the duty of one man to help another, but he at the same time acknowledges a man's responsibility to his family. He is interested in medicine not for the money but to help people. This point is dramatized by his reluctance to bother with a hypochondriac. He once left his wife to do medical research, but he eventually went home, putting his responsibility to his family ahead of his responsibility to the world.

Sue Bayliss

Jim's wife Sue put her husband through medical school, and she expects more than gratitude in return. She blames Chris's infectious, insinuating idealism for her husband's interest in the fiscally unrewarding field of medical research.

Frank Lubey

A simple neighbor, Frank has an interest in astrology. Mother asked him before the start of the play to prepare a horoscope for Larry in order to determine his "favorable day."

Lydia Lubey

Now married to Frank, Lydia is a former sweetheart of George's, but she did not wait for him to return from the war. Seeing Lydia makes George wistful about the simpler life he could have had, if he had not left home for the greater world of New York.

Bert

Bert is a neighborhood boy who plays cop-and-robber games with Joe Keller, to Mother's chagrin. Keller has allowed Bert and the other children to get the story of his jail time wrong and to believe that he is a chief of police with a jail in his basement. Mother is made very anxious by these games.

Summary

Joe and Kate Keller had two sons, Chris and Larry. Keller owned a manufacturing plant with Steve Deever, and their families were close. Steve's daughter Ann was Larry's beau, and George was their friend. When the war came, both Keller boys and George were drafted.

During the war, Keller's and Deever's manufacturing plant had a very profitable contract with the U.S. Army, supplying airplane parts. One morning, a shipment of defective parts came in. Under pressure from the army to keep up the output, Steve Deever called Keller, who had not yet come into work that morning, to ask what he should do. Keller told Steve to weld the cracks in the airplane parts and ship them out. Steve was nervous about doing this alone, but Keller said that he had the flu and could not go into work. Steve shipped out the defective but possibly safe parts on his own.

Later, it was discovered that the defective parts caused twenty-one planes to crash and their pilots to die. Steve and Keller were arrested and convicted, but Keller managed to win an appeal and get his conviction overturned. He claimed that Steve did not call him and that he was completely unaware of the shipment. Keller went home free, while Steve remained in jail, shunned by his family.

Meanwhile, overseas, Larry received word about the first conviction. Racked with shame and grief, he wrote a letter to Ann telling her that she must not wait for him. Larry then went out to fly a mission, during which he broke out of formation and crashed his plane, killing himself. Larry was reported missing.

Three years later, the action of the play begins. Chris has invited Ann to the Keller house because he intends to propose to her--they have renewed their contact in the last few years while she has been living in New York. They must be careful, however, since Mother insists that Larry is still alive somewhere. Her belief is reinforced by the fact that Larry's memorial tree blew down in a storm that morning, which she sees as a positive sign. Her superstition has also led her to ask the neighbor to make a horoscope for Larry in order to determine whether the day he disappeared was an astrologically favorable day. Everyone else has accepted that Larry is not coming home, and Chris and Keller argue that Mother should learn to forget her other son. Mother demands that Keller in particular should believe that Larry is alive, because if he is not, then their son's blood is on Keller's hands.

Ann's brother George arrives to stop the wedding. He had gone to visit Steve in jail to tell him that his daughter was getting married, and then he left newly convinced that his father was innocent. He accuses Keller, who disarms George by being friendly and confident. George is reassured until Mother accidentally says that Keller has not been sick in fifteen years. Keller tries to cover her slip of the tongue by adding the exception of his flu during the war, but it is now too late. George is again convinced of Keller's guilt, but Chris tells him to leave the house.

Chris's confidence in his father's innocence is shaken, however, and in a confrontation with his parents, he is told by Mother that he must believe that Larry is alive. If Larry is dead, Mother claims, then it means that Keller killed him by shipping out those defective parts. Chris shouts angrily at his father, accusing him of being inhuman and a murderer, and he wonders aloud what he must do in response to this unpleasant new information about his family history.

Chris is disillusioned and devastated, and he runs off to be angry at his father in privacy. Mother tells Keller that he ought to volunteer to go to jail--if Chris wants him to. She also talks to Ann and continues insisting that Larry is alive. Ann is forced to show Mother the letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. The note basically confirms Mother's belief that if Larry is dead, then Keller is responsible--not because Larry's plane had the defective parts, but because Larry killed himself in response to the family responsibility and shame due to the defective parts.

Mother begs Ann not to show the letter to her husband and son, but Ann does not comply. Chris returns and says that he is not going to send his father to jail, because that would accomplish nothing and his family practicality has finally overcome his idealism. He also says that he is going to leave and that Ann will not be going with him, because he fears that she will forever wordlessly ask him to turn his father in to the authorities.

Keller enters, and Mother is unable to prevent Chris from reading Larry's letter aloud. Keller now finally understands that in the eyes of Larry and in a symbolic moral sense, all the dead pilots were his sons. He says that he is going into the house.

Family

Family is the central theme of All My Sons. Every decision that Joe makes centers on the attempt to protect and support his family. The irony of the play is that, in the end, going too far to support his family becomes the cause of the Keller family’s destruction. When the choice of whether to let the defective parts ship out arises, Joe chooses what he perceives to be advantageous for his family: he tries to preserve his business’s reputation so that he can continue to make money for them in the short term and also pass the business on to Chris in good shape. But choosing family over honesty backfires in a devastating way for him.

First, Joe loses Larry. Although most of the characters thought that Larry had died in battle, when Chris reads Larry’s letter to Annie, they discover that his death had been a suicide. Larry killed himself because he could not bear the knowledge of his father’s corruption, particularly knowing that it had caused the deaths of fellow pilots. He could not live in the understanding that his father had chosen their family over honesty and compassion for others.

After Larry’s death, Kate becomes distant from both Joe and reality. She remains unable to accept that her son is dead because, as she reveals late in the play, that would also mean accepting that Joe was responsible for it. She believes that if Larry is dead, he must have died due to his father letting the defective parts ship.

Finally, Joe loses Chris as soon as Chris realizes the truth of what his father has done, that he really did knowingly let the defective parts ship. Chris initially decides not to turn him in. Yet he also makes it clear that they are no longer family when he announces he is moving away.

The horror and grief of having destroyed his family in an attempt to care for them is too much for Joe, leading to his suicide at the end of the play. The play’s title comes from his final realization that he should have treated the whole world like family. He should have viewed the pilots who flew in the crafts he helped build as “all my sons,” rather than exclusively protecting his biological family at the cost of everything else.

Loss and Acceptance

As the play begins, the central source of tension in the Keller family is the different degrees to which the family members (and Annie) have accepted or not accepted Larry’s death. Annie and Chris clearly understand and accept that Larry is dead, because they have gotten over it enough to want to get married even though Annie was originally with Larry. And Joe is able to overcome the grief and strangeness of this enough to accept that they are in love and give Chris a blessing of sorts. However, Kate becomes a powerful obstacle to her living son’s happiness because of her refusal to accept that she has lost Larry. The true motivation and significance of this failure to accept her loss emerges only late in the play, when she reveals that accepting Larry’s death would mean believing that Joe is responsible and that she could not bear experiencing the consequences of that acceptance.

Guilt and Blame

Joe Keller’s culpability for his corrupt action in letting the defective parts ship is a driving force in this play. It is under the surface in the characters’ social interactions to the extent that the audience knows nothing about it until late in act 1. Yet it shapes everything that...

American Dream

In a sense, All My Sons is a critical investigation of the quest to achieve material comfort and an improved social status through hard work and determination. In the Horatio Alger myth, even a disadvantaged, impoverished young man can attain wealth and prestige through personal fortitude, moral integrity, and untiring industry. Joe Keller is that sort of self-made man, one who made his way from blue-collar worker to factory owner. However, Joe sacrifices his integrity to materialism, and he makes a reprehensible decision that sends American pilots to their deaths, something he is finally forced to face.