Arthur Miller’s plays often show how families are destroyed by false values. How does this information add to your understanding of All My Sons? Give examples from the play. Write 80-100 words.
•Suggested points for writing:
•What are Keller’s values?
•What is the problem with his values?
•How did his values help Kate justify his crime?
•Why did his values destroy his family?
This is only a short answer space. We can't write the detail you are asking for. All My Sons employs a pattern that is fundamental to most tragedies. Protagonists in tragedy must, in some degree, be held accountable for their actions: their value system. When faced with a moral dilemma, they often make a wrong choice. Joe, at a critical moment, elected to place his family's finances above the lives of courageous American soldiers.
The revelations that lead up to Joe's tragic recognition of guilt and his suicide, the final consequences of his choice, are essential to All My Sons. There is a sense of anake, or tragic necessity, that moves the work along towards its inevitable moment of truth and awful but final retribution.
