Themes: 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.
Expert Q&A
"You remember, overseas, I was in command of a company? ... Well, I lost them ... Just about all ... It takes a little time to toss that off. Because they weren't just men. For instance, one time it'd been raining several days and this kid came to me, and gave me his last pair of dry socks. Put them in my pocket. That's only a little thing ... but ... that's the kind of guys I had. They didn't die; they killed themselves for each other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and they'd've been here today. And I got an idea—watching them go down. Everything was being destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of ... responsibility. Man for man. You understand me?—To show that, to bring that on to the earth again like some kind of a monument and everyone would feel it standing there, behind him, and it would make a difference to him ... And then I came home and it was incredible. I ... there was no meaning in it here; the whole thing to them was a kind of a—bus accident. I went to work with Dad, and that rat-race again. I felt ... what you said ... ashamed somehow. Because nobody was changed at all. It seemed to make suckers out of a lot of guys. I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank-book, to drive the new car, to see the new refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you've got to know that it came out of the love a man can have for a man, you've got to be a little better because of that. Otherwise what you have is really loot, and there's blood on it. I didn't want to take any of it. And I guess it included you."
"You remember, overseas, I was in command of a company? ... Well, I lost them ... Just about all ... It takes a little time to toss that off. Because they weren't just men. For instance, one time it'd been raining several days and this kid came to me, and gave me his last pair of dry socks. Put them in my pocket. That's only a little thing ... but ... that's the kind of guys I had. They didn't die; they killed themselves for each other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and they'd've been here today. And I got an idea—watching them go down. Everything was being destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of ... responsibility. Man for man. You understand me?—To show that, to bring that on to the earth again like some kind of a monument and everyone would feel it standing there, behind him, and it would make a difference to him ... And then I came home and it was incredible. I ... there was no meaning in it here; the whole thing to them was a kind of a—bus accident. I went to work with Dad, and that rat-race again. I felt ... what you said ... ashamed somehow. Because nobody was changed at all. It seemed to make suckers out of a lot of guys. I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank-book, to drive the new car, to see the new refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you've got to know that it came out of the love a man can have for a man, you've got to be a little better because of that. Otherwise what you have is really loot, and there's blood on it. I didn't want to take any of it. And I guess it included you."
In this quotation, Chris is demonstrating signs of what today we would call survivor's guilt. During the war, he lost virtually all the members of his company, and when he came back to work in his father's company, he felt bad about taking advantage of the prosperity that the death of his comrades had made possible. Chris's guilt is compounded by the fact that his brother Larry is missing, presumed dead.
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