All My Sons

Kate's attitude towards her son is sort of the "elephant in the room" for the rest of the characters. She simply refuses to believe that her son, Larry,was killed in a plane crash three years...

Sue worries that Chris's idealism will make Jim unhappy with his career path. Jim doesn't enjoy his medical practice, as he doesn't find it fulfilling. His patients are needy and whiny, and he...

Joe Keller is the patriarch of the family, he is a self-made man, who worked his way up from worker to boss/owner. He owns a factory that made airplane parts for the military during World War II....

The main conflict in the play "All My Sons" is over the sale of defective parts to airplane manufacturers by Keller's company. Those parts were used in planes that crashed at war, killing...

The apple tree is a symbol of Larry. The tree was planted to commemorate him. The tree's death symbolizes the way the older Kellers will finally come to fully accept Larry's death. A high wind...

Kate Keller clings to superstitions, saying that some superstitions are very nice! For her, relying on superstition to keep alive her hope that Larry will return home is a way of grasping at...

Joe decides to commit suicide after Chris reads aloud Larry's letter to Ann. In the letter, Larry explains to Ann that he knows his father knowingly sent out plane parts that were faulty to...

The play is set in the aftermath of World War II. It is about the Keller family: Kate, Joe, and their two sons, Chris and Larry. Larry was in the military and died during the war before the play...

The setting of the play in Joe Keller's backyard is significant because it shows the intimate relationship between Joe's home and business lives. The setting reinforces Joe's self-image as a...

The crime committed by Joe Keller and Steve Deever was borne out of greed. They wanted to make as much money shipping as many aircraft cylinder heads to the military as possible. As they were much...

Chris is suffering from survival guilt, often described by survivors as the feeling that while they survived, better people died. Survivors often believe that others died because they were better,...

As a father, Joe Keller thinks that he is sacrificing all that he has to be a strong provider for his sons. He keeps the family business strong so that he can pass it on to Chris and Larry once he...

The apple tree is symbolic in many ways. First, it was planted in the memory of Larry, the eldest the the Keller children whose plane was shot down in the World War II. Apple trees are universal...

Larry Keller never actually takes the stage in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. What the audience knows about him is limited to what is conveyed by the other characters. Though he never appears on...

Joe Keller says that everything he has done in his life has been for his sons. This includes the decision to ship the cracked cylinder heads that lead to the death of so many airmen. Because Joe...

You asked more than one question in your original question. Enotes only permits one question and so I have edited your original question accordingly. Please do not ask multiple questions in...

Joe Keller is a factory man who has worked hard all of his life for his family. As All My Sons by Arthur Miller begins, Joe is sixty years old. His son, Chris Keller, is thirty-two and a veteran of...

Steve Deever is presented in All My Sons as a patsy, a victim of the obsessive, headlong pursuit of the American Dream. What Miller is doing here is alerting us to the fact that it's often the...

The title says everything about the perspective that Joe Keller ought to have had on humanity but chose not to adopt out of greed. He should've realized that he had a great responsibility to all...

The significance of money in the play is to show the downfalls of pursuing it and the compromised and sometimes unethical things that the pursuit of money can drive people to do. Money is...

Realism is writing that portrays life as it really is or as it could be. In short, realism in literature seeks to emulate the way highs and lows of everyday life. In realism, the characters act and...

Chris Keller has been living in a state of denial. He is his father's son, and that involves a certain amount--actually, a considerable amount--of self-deception regarding the Keller family's...

There is so much of this sad play that shows this is a domestic tragedy. A domestic tragedy can be defined as a tragedy where the principal actors in the tragedy are normal lower and middle class...

Frank is a 32-year-old character who managed to be one year ahead of the draft. He never served in WWII. Instead, he stayed home, and as a result, began dating and married George’s former...

The turning point, also known as the climax, in All My Sons occurs when Chris Keller confronts his father, Joe, in the backyard after George figures out that Joe evaded responsibility for selling...

In All My Sons, Miller presents Joe Keller as both a tragic hero and a villain by having Joe force Steve Deever to ship the faulty machine parts. On the one hand, Joe may be considered a tragic...

George is Ann's brother and he functions in the play's second act as an inquisitor and antagonist to Chris and especially to Joe. George does not believe Joe Keller's story about what happened in...

Some people turn to astrology as a way of finding answers to their problems. Kate Keller is one such person. She's been trying to find out what's happened to her son Larry, but so far without any...

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons debuted on 1947 and examines the role of morality and mortality among business partners. The use of a gendered term in the title highlights a heightened sense around the...

In Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, Joe Keller feels guilty because he carries within himself the knowledge that he was responsible for the deaths of twenty-one pilots during World War II, the...

Kate Keller is a controlling person for whom family is very important. Because Larry's body has never been found, she refuses to believe he has been killed, though the rest of the family is ready...

This is a highly timely and important revelation, as Jim's understanding of Keller's position and his own revelation about how he has been similarly involved in acts of compromise underscore the...

In the play Ann and George are sister and brother, both children of the former partner of Joe Keller, Steve Deever. However, they differ in their attitude to their father, who has now been in jail...

The function of the newspaper in the first act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons is to set the scene with a communal activity that involves minimal actual interaction but also serves to introduce...

We find out the answer to your question at the end of Act I when Joe Keller tells "his" story to Ann Deever, Steve Deever's daughter and Joe's former partner on whom Joe has conveniently blamed the...

The role of the past is critical in the play and overhangs the actions of most of the key characters, with dramatic effects that include impeding their ability to move forward in some cases, as...

When Kate Keller says these words to her husband, she is referring to the fact that George Deever, Ann's brother, is on his way to the Keller home. She is very concerned about George's need to...

Although Miller was writing at a time of great experimentation in the theater, his play follows a conventional dramatic structure. It is in three acts. The acts are not divided into scenes. Scenes...

Arthur Miller was an author of modern tragedies, plays that illuminated the frailty of both human life and, as importantly, of humanity itself. In perhaps his most well-know and loved play, Death...

It might be a bit of a stretch to conclude that Sue Bayliss, a former nurse now married to an idealistic physician, “hates” the Keller family, her neighbors in Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons. If...

The conflicts that Chris has with his father, mother, and girlfriend are all related to the death of his brother, Larry. Ann was Larry's girlfriend, who started dating Chris after Larry died in the...

Prior to the action in All My Sons, Chris Keller had steadfastly believed that his father, Joe Keller, had played no role in shipping defective aircraft parts. The full responsibility had been...

Frank Lubey is a friend of the Keller family. He is a fortunate and kind man who believes in luck. At the time of the play's setting, Frank is thirty-two years old. This makes him one year too old...

In Act 3 Jim tells Kate that everyone has what he calls their own star—the star of one's honesty. At this point in the play, Chris has come to realize the terrible truth of his father's immoral...

On the surface, the role of women in All My Sons is fairly conventional. Women such as Kate Keller are confined to supportive roles as wives and mothers. To a large extent, they only live their...

There is a suggestion in the play that Chris always knew about his father's guilt. It is hidden in the fact that Chris has never allowed his name to be put on the business, and in the remark that...