An Analysis of Sacrifice in Arthur Miller's All My Sons
In All My Sons sacrifice plays a crucial role in almost every part of the play. Miller explores the impact of sacrifices made for one’s family versus humanity as a whole, explicitly the direction and intention of a sacrifice. As part of this essay, I will identify and explain what I consider to be the most important in the play. The second aspect of sacrifice in All My Sons which I will examine in this essay involves the idea that not all sacrifices are actually conscious decisions; many of the acts of ‘sacrifice’ in the play could be explained simply by an ‘escape’ - does Joe Keller kill himself as a final realisation of the crimes that he has committed or just as an escape from the pressure around him?
When we first encounter the characters in All My Sons, it is clear that the family is well integrated with its surroundings: as neighbours happily stroll by, and children are free to roam around the area, Jim Bayliss, the Keller’s neighbour, confidently discusses such informal matters as the weather and the news. Clearly the Keller family is content, however later in the play we discover that there is a sub-story which will turn out to cause more destruction and chaos than previously assumed.
In his autobiography, Arthur Miller, upon reflecting on his play, says: “This kind of placid American backyard was not ordinarily associated, at least in 1947, with murder and suicide.” This is an indicator that the setting of All My Sons was planned deliberately by Miller- it was a literary way of making the events that occur in the play seem more unexpected to the audience. It is also a subtle pointer that maybe ‘murder and suicide’, as Miller phrases it, is just as common as the suburbs in which it resides in All My Sons. Miller is subverting common assumption about the disconnection between normal, day to day domestic sacrifices and those made on an entirely different scale on a war front - to rephrase, he is indicating to people that the war was everywhere; it is
When we first encounter the characters in All My Sons, it is clear that the family is well integrated with its surroundings: as neighbours happily stroll by, and children are free to roam around the area, Jim Bayliss, the Keller’s neighbour, confidently discusses such informal matters as the weather and the news. Clearly the Keller family is content, however later in the play we discover that there is a sub-story which will turn out to cause more destruction and chaos than previously assumed.
In his autobiography, Arthur Miller, upon reflecting on his play, says: “This kind of placid American backyard was not ordinarily associated, at least in 1947, with murder and suicide.” This is an indicator that the setting of All My Sons was planned deliberately by Miller- it was a literary way of making the events that occur in the play seem more unexpected to the audience. It is also a subtle pointer that maybe ‘murder and suicide’, as Miller phrases it, is just as common as the suburbs in which it resides in All My Sons. Miller is subverting common assumption about the disconnection between normal, day to day domestic sacrifices and those made on an entirely different scale on a war front - to rephrase, he is indicating to people that the war was everywhere; it is
Bibliography: 1. Miller, Arthur, All My Sons, Penguin Classics, 2009 2 3. Ibsen, Henrik, “The Wild Duck”, Methuen (2005) 4 5. Karl Meuli, Scythica, 1935. [ 1 ]. Miller, Arthur, “Timebends, A life”, Methuen, London (1987) ISBN 0413414809 [ 2 ] [ 3 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 32, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 4 ] [ 5 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 55, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 6 ] [ 7 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 57, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 8 ] [ 9 ]. Centola, Steven R, “All My Sons” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [ 10 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 35, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 11 ] [ 12 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 70, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 13 ] [ 14 ]. Karl Meuli, Scythica, 1935. [ 15 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 59, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 16 ] [ 17 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 70, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 18 ] [ 19 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 22, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 20 ] [ 21 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 84, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 22 ] [ 23 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 84, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 24 ] [ 25 ]. Miller, Arthur, “All My Sons”, Pg. 84, Penguin Classics, 2009 [ 26 ]