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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.6
Publication Date: June 25, 2020
DOI:10.14738/assrj.76.8505.
Mowaad, M. S. A. (2020). The Necessity For Human Solidarity In Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
7(6) 686-695.
The Necessity For Human Solidarity In Arthur Miller’s All My Sons
Dr. Mostafa Saber Abdel-Hamid Mowaad
College of Sciences and Arts, Qassim University,
Saudi Arabia
ABSTRACT
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons depicts the human tendency of self- deception, betrayal and guilt which leads to the deterioration and the
collapse of human values. The intensity of these elements may vary but
they run through all of his plays. In All My Sons, 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. Joe atones for his crime by committing suicide.
According to Miller, the American Dream creates false hopes that
prevent people from being proud of what they have accomplished to
make their lives better than they would be elsewhere, and eventually
fail at achieving anything. Guilt is fundamentally a prosocial behavior
because it strengthens interpersonal relationships. It is a kind of
regretful, remorseful, painful, and aversive feeling aroused by one’s own
actions or inactions. Guilt is different from regret in that guilt is more
related to interpersonal harm whereas regret is more related to
intrapersonal harm. Guilt is usually related to and is operationalized as
the acceptance of responsibility for harm. Guilt has long been related to
prosocial behavior. People tend to use altruistic means when under the
stress of guilt.1
INTRODUCTION
Under the pressure of being guilty, one uses self-deception which is one of the popular escape
methods that people use to prevent themselves from feeling guilty while in the same time allowing
themselves to escape from something that they don't want to face. Self-deception involves a blind
or unexamined acceptance of a belief that can easily be seen as “spurious” if the person were to
inspect the belief impartially or from the perspective of the generalized other.2 Using self-deception
as a means to escape guilt, results in causing a circle of betrayal. The effects of betrayal include
shock, loss and grief, damaged self-esteem, self-doubt, and anger. Not in frequently, they produce
life-altering changes. The effects of a catastrophic betrayal are most relevant for anxiety disorders.3
This study, however, attempts to investigate how guilt, self-deception and betrayal operate in a play
by Arthur Miller, and how the protagonist tries to hide his deeds, which result in making his life
unlivable. The problem of these elements is one of the major themes Miller dealt with in his plays
DATA ABOUT MILLER'S LIFE
Arthur Miller was one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century. He was born
in October 1915 in New York City to a women's clothing manufacturer, who lost everything in the
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol.7, Issue 6, June-2020
economic collapse of the 1930s. Living through young adulthood during the Great Depression,
Miller was shaped by the poverty that surrounded him. The Depression demonstrated to the
playwright the fragility and vulnerability of human existence in the modern era. After graduating
from high school, Miller worked in a warehouse so that he could earn enough money to attend the
University of Michigan, where he began to write plays.
Miller's first play to make it to Broadway, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), was a dismal
failure, closing after only four performances. This early setback almost discouraged Miller from
writing completely, but he gave himself one more try. Three years later, All My Sons won the New
York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the best play of 1947, launching Miller into theatrical
stardom. All My Sons, a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials, was strongly
influenced by the naturalist drama of Henrik Ibsen. Along with Death of a Salesman (his most
enduring success), All My Sons and The Man Who Had All the Luck form a thematic trilogy of plays
about love triangles involving fathers and sons. The drama of the family is at the core of all of Miller's
major plays, but nowhere is it more prominent than in All My Sons and Death of a Salesman.
Death of a Salesman (1949) secured Miller's reputation as one of the nation's foremost playwrights.
In this play, Miller mixes the tradition of social realism that informs most of his work with a more
experimental structure that includes fluid leaps in time as the protagonist, Willy Loman, drifts into
memories of his sons as teenagers. Loman represents an American archetype: a victim of his own
delusions of grandeur and obsession with success, and haunted by a sense of failure.
Miller won a Tony Award for Death of a Salesman as well as a Pulitzer Prize. The play has been
frequently revived in film, television, and stage versions that have included actors such as Dustin
Hoffman, George C. Scott and, most recently, Brian Dennehy in the part of Willy Loman. Miller
followed Death of a Salesman with his most politically significant work, The Crucible (1953), a tale
of the Salem witch trials that contains obvious analogies to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings
in 1950s America. The highly controversial nature of the politics of The Crucible, which lauds those
who refuse to name names, led to the play's mixed response. In later years, however, it has become
one of the most studied and performed plays of American theater.
Three years after The Crucible, in 1956, Miller found himself persecuted by the very force that he
warned against, when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Miller refused to name people he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade before,
and he was convicted of contempt. He later won an appeal. Also in 1956, Miller married actress
Marilyn Monroe. The two divorced in 1961, one year before her death. That year Monroe appeared
in her last film, The Misfits, which is based on an original screenplay by Miller. After divorcing
Monroe, Miller wed Ingeborg Morath, to whom he remained married until his death in 2005. The
pair had a son and a daughter. Miller also wrote the plays A Memory of Two Mondays and the short A
View from the Bridge, which were both staged in 1955. His other works include After the Fall (1964),
a thinly veiled account of his marriage to Monroe, as well as The Price (1967), The Archbishop's
Ceiling (1977), and The American Clock (1980). His most recent works include the plays The Ride
Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier
Award for Best Play. Although Miller did not write frequently for film, he did pen an adaptation for
the 1996 film version of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, which garnered
him an Academy Award nomination. Miller's daughter Rebecca married Day-Lewis in 1996.
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Mowaad, M. S. A. (2020). The Necessity For Human Solidarity In Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(6) 686-695.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.76.8505 688
THE DREAM DELUSION OF JOE KELLER
All My Sons deals with the dream delusion of Joe Keller, seemingly successful, self-made man who,
to attain the material upward mobility, adopted unethical and immoral means in the past. As the
play opens, Joe Keller is described as a “heavy man of stolid mind and build, a business man these
many years, but with the imprint of the machine-shop worker and boss still upon him”. (I, 6) He
appears to be a magnet in the neighborhood—neighbors come and go from his yard, and a young
boy comes to play games with Joe. He is easily content with simple things, like reading the
newspaper on the porch, and enjoys spending time with his family.
At the introspective phase of life, Keller realizes the emptiness of his success. The seeds of unethical
means he has sowed in the past have brought him bitter harvestand sore fruits. The protagonist is
a representative type of the character who has lived through the Depression and despite a lack of
education has been able to attain the worldly success, hoping his son would inherit it. Joe represents
common hopes and aspirations of American society, ultimately willing to achieve material
prosperity.4
Miller reveals Keller’s problem and trouble: “His cast of mind cannot admit that he, personally, has
any viable connection with his world, his universe, or his society.” 5 According to Keller’s moral
code, his actions are not criminal as he is doing it for the sake of the family. Consequently, he denies
any responsibility or guilt and insists on his innocence. For Keller, “Nothing is bigger than the
family.” (III, 83) The setting of the play described at the beginning of Act One also emphasizes this
narrow-minded and restricted view: “The stage is hedged on right and left by tall, closely planted
poplars which lend the yard a secluded atmosphere.” (I, 3) Miller’s description of the backyard of
the Keller home illustrates a metaphor for Keller’s mind and range of vision. Keller indirectly admits
his suffering through his speech with Bert: “Seein’ the jail ain’t allowed, Bert. You know that.” (I, 11)
Metaphorically, his guilty mind a kind of jail which causes him suffering, yet he cannot admit it.
So he us Bert to be his spy in order to know whether or not people are still talking about his past
deeds. Keller tells Anne, his son’s fiancée: “The only one still talks about it is my wife.” (I, 31) Kate,
on the other hand, indicates: “That’s because you keep on playing policeman with the kids. All their
parents hear out of you is jail, jail, jail.” (I, 31) Keller tries to convince himself that the people who
used to call him “Murderer”(I, 31) are the same who play with him: “Every Saturday night the whole
gang is play in’ poker in this arbor. All the ones who yelled murderer takin’ my money now.” (I, 31)
Joe Keller, an escapist, wants to run away from reality. To safeguard himself, he has prepared around
him a web of his false assumptions. He asserts that the power of money makes people forget his
indulgence in crime. The truth seems surrendered to almighty money. His assertion underlines the
corrupt mentality of American society which recognizes and honors the material success attained
by betraying the character-ethic.
Keller sees the family as everything. His view is expressed by Sue, their neighbor when she calls his
family “The Holy family.”(II, 49) Sue is of course ironic. Keller holds up the family as a supreme ideal
by lying to himself and believing his lies. In this sense, he tries to be the perfect father, husband,
businessman and neighbor, but his guilt, shame, and the reality are something totally different. The
family is his only justification for the crime he has committed. He is able to stave off guilt by telling
Chris and Kate and, ultimately, himself, that he only did it for the family: “Chris... Chris, I did it for
you...For you! A business for you.” (I, 15) And “I’m his father and he’s my son, and if there’s