Arthur
Miller is America's leading playwright. He was deeply influenced by the Greek
drama, Ibsen and Odets. His works reflect the same quest for order in human
relations as depicted in the Greek drama. His success as a playwright begins
with one of his most widely known plays All My Sons (1947). Arthur Miller's
plays depict the human tendency of betrayal and guilt which leads to the decay,
and degeneration of human values. The intensity of these two elements of
betrayal and guilt may vary in his plays, but it runs through all his plays as
a motif. Joe, a selfish businessman, in order to save his business from ruin,
supplies defective cylinder heads to the American Air Force which results in
the death of 21 fighter plane pilots. The theme of betrayal and guilt pervades
the action of the play from its very beginning. The person who has committed
the crime tries to justify his betrayal and guilt on the grounds which are not
acceptable to the just social system. The jail motif runs throughout the play.
It testifies to the fact that jail is a place where wrongdoers have to go
ultimately. Joe Keller betrays his business partner, Steve Deever, too. It is
true that Miller exposes man's cruel nature in All My Sons, but it is also true
that he condemns traits of treachery, betrayal and selfishness in man's nature.
Miller seems to suggest that one must remain faithful and responsible to the
interests of society, failing which one must bear the consequences as we notice
in All My Sons. Towards the end of the play Joe Keller atones for his crime and
sin by committing suicide.
There is
an implicit contrast between the self-sacrifice of the men who died in the war,
some of them as a result of Joe’s factory’s faulty parts, and those who were
looking after their own interest, such as Joe. By association with Joe, Chris
also becomes stained with corruption, as he took a salary from his father’s
firm in spite of his suspicions that the money was tainted with the blood of
the dead airmen.
Finally,
in Act Three, Joe has to confront the implications of his actions. In words
that foreshadow his end, he says of Chris, “I’m his father and he’s my son, and
if there’s something bigger than that I’ll put a bullet in my head!” As the
play shows, there is something bigger than that. So when Joe finally does face
up to his crime, he does the only thing he can morally do, which is to
extinguish his life. The sense of waste is overwhelming: not just of Joe’s
life, but of all the other lives that have been lost or torn apart because of
the pursuit of profit: the twenty-one airmen, Steve and the rest of the Deever
family, Larry, Chris, and Kate.
What is
more, Joe’s death is far from a resolution. Psychologists say that there is
often an element of revenge in a suicide, with the suicide placing his or her
body for maximum dramatic effect on the person who is deemed culpable. In All
My Sons, Joe’s suicide carries a flavor of revenge on those who have pushed
him to face his crime: Kate, Chris, and Ann. Accordingly, the curtain falls on
Chris weeping with guilt over his father’s death, and there is a sense that his
guilt will hang like a shadow over the marriage between him and Ann, if indeed
it still takes place.
Thus the
ramifications of Joe’s crime do not end with his death, but go on indefinitely.
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