This content is from Wikipedia. We do not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your discretion when relying on it. GradeSaver also offers a professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors.

Background

Miller wrote All My Sons after his first play The Man Who Had All the Luck had been a complete failure on Broadway lasting only four performances. Miller wrote All My Sons as a final attempt at writing a commercially successful play - if the play failed to find an audience Miller had vowed to "find some other line of work."^[1]

All My Sons is based upon a true story, which Arthur Miller's then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper. The story described how a child informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the U.S. military during World War II. Asked in a TV interview what about the story had inspired him, Arthur Miller said, "I was fascinated by the idea that a child could have this kind of moral courage." When asked why he changed the gender of the character for his play, Miller said, "At the time I didn't understand women very well."

Henrik Ibsen's influence on Miller is evidenced from the Ibsen play The Wild Duck, where Miller took the idea of two partners in a business where one is forced to take moral and legal responsibility for the other. This is mirrored in All My Sons. He also borrowed the idea of a character’s idealism being the source of a problem.^[3]

The criticism of the American Dream, which lies at the heart of All My Sons was one reason why Arthur Miller was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s, when America was gripped by anti-communist hysteria. Miller sent a copy of the play to Elia Kazan who directed the original stage version of All My Sons. Kazan was a former member of the Communist Party who shared Miller's left-wing views. However, their relationship was destroyed when Kazan gave names of suspected Communists to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare.^[1][4]