All My Sons by Arthur Miller Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

All My Sons by Arthur Miller - Essay Example This essay will describe how issues of morality and politics affected the main characters, how Miller employed the fundamental elements of drama to create a modern play on par with older Greek tragedies, and some personal observations. As an initial matter, it is important to note that competing political and moral belief systems were instrumental in the development of the main characters. An examination of the father and sons is useful. The father, Joe Keller, was by all accounts a family-oriented man. He loved and provided for his sons. Indeed, as the play demonstrates, Joe believed it to be his highest moral responsibility to take care of and provide material support for his family. Money was important according to his realistic view of the world and of his own role in the world. His sons, Chris and Larry, provide a sharp contrast to the father's philosophical underpinnings. Both are of an idealistic bent. Family, to be sure, is important, but both have deeply ingrained notions of a deeper social obligation to their country and to other individuals in their country. In this case, involving the sale of damaged airplane parts to the United States government, the play was set from the beginning to elicit different and competing responses from the main characters. Joe, as the practical family ma... His sons were Chris and Larry. Other fathers had to worry about their own sons. Chris and Larry, on the other hand, because of their different notions of social obligation and honor, could never accept such a narrowly tailored and self-serving justification. For them, both veterans of WW II, social obligation was a more comprehensive duty which transcended temporary financial windfalls or the isolated survival of an individual family. Sons, from their point of view, might have been defined as American soldiers, as American citizens, or as allies more generally around the world. Because of these broader beliefs in social duty, both were unable to accept their father's complicity in the sale of the damaged parts. Larry committed suicide by crashing his airplane and Chris threatened to abandon his heritage by leaving the factory and his father. In the final analysis, these characters were defined by their views of the world. Their actions and their decisions adhered to these philosophical characterizations and the reader cannot imagine that they could have behaved much differently than Miller scripted them to act. These three are philosophies as much as they are people. 1.2 How Miller Used the Elements of Drama to Effectively Emphasize his Themes This play is nothing if not a tragedy. It is tragic because well-intentioned people suffered tragic fates. Miller highlighted this feeling of tragedy by creating and adhering to a dramatic structure which created both a feeling of empathy and a feeling of disgust. There was empathy for individuals and disgust for certain actions; more particularly, the dramatic structure employed by Miller vested the main characters with believable motivations and their consequent actions with realistic results. The