The Tragedy of Joe Keller - Coursework Example

The Tragedy of Joe Keller Introduction The decisions and actions of Joe Keller in All My Sonsare very bad that one of his sons totally loathes him, and the other commits suicide. Joe Keller is portrayed as a “man among men, (Miller 1971, x)” for he has been successful, and that, to a lot of people, should be rewarded with high regard and esteem. His longing to leave his business to his sons is anchored in love. The value Keller has for his sons is priceless, and his faith in the purity of being a father is evident as he remarks, “A father is a father” (Miller 1971, 47), and this remark utterly reflects his conviction that the family should be given more importance than external matters at all times. He says to one of his sons, Chris: “What the hell did I work for? That’s only for you, Chris, the whole shooting match is for you! (Miller 1971, 67)” This wanting to build a strong relationship with his son is, somewhat, what liberates him from moral duty, and enables him to send those defective parts with a full sense of right and wrong. Analysis On second thoughts Arthur Miller, author of All My Sons, is the issue of actions and outcomes, and the story performs this theme in Joe Keller’s character. When Miller is somewhat displeased with All my Sons, it is because he feels that he had permitted the effect of what he refers to as one form of ‘morality’ to blur the other form where in the play is mainly concerned (Bloom 1987). These two forms of ‘morality’ are directly connected to the two forms of ‘motivation’, namely, social and psychological. The dilemma may be viewed more visibly by seeing that the play has two core themes. The first, where in Miller asserts ‘the play is primarily interested, (Bloom 1987, 54)’ is rational, the second emotional. The ‘rational’ is mostly communicated through the conversations or dialogues in the play, the ‘emotional’ is more profoundly entrenched in the deed itself. Joe Keller slowly arises as a crook. He has traded faulty cylinder heads to the military throughout the war and was hence wholly culpable for the demise of 21 pilots. The awfulness of this action is strongly made clear by the audience by the revelation that the elder son of Keller was a pilot MIA (missing in action) (Miller 1971). This is what can be referred to as the emotional integral theme, and the largest part of the plot is focused on this previous criminal activity and its outcomes for Keller and his loved ones. However it is this affective core that for Miller confuses the actual message of the play. All my Sons is clearly a narrative about morality. At the trial, for the charge of selling faulty parts which resulted in some fatalities, Joe Keller had declined culpability, letting his meek colleague to shoulder all the blame. Being absolved, he has proudly rebuilt his business and even if the people surrounding him still think he is blameworthy they have clearly reintegrated him into their community. However, the luck of his absolution is moderated by sorrow at his son’s alleged death. About three years afterward, Ann, the fiancee of Joe’s dead son and daughter of Joe’s business associate, turns up to become romantically involved with Chris Keller, the other son of Joe (Miller 1971). This rouses a dilemma for Chris’s mother, because she has declined to embrace the reality of the death of his son and has viewed the failure of Ann to get married as proof of her similar belief in his survival. Hence, the proposed marriage requires letting go of the lost son. However, more importantly, her acceptance of the death of her son also requires her to recognize a link between that incident and what she believes is her husband’s culpability. The condition is complicated when the brother of Ann, George, turns up to face Joe with that remorse. And even if he is not able to encourage an admission of guilt from Joe the approaching wedding does. Because Joe’s wife uses her last option so as to stop the wedding which will indicate the last string of her hope: she discloses Joe’s culpability to Chris. Yet she and Joe are ultimately crushed by a note which Ann shows at that moment, a note in which the MIA son had revealed his plan of killing himself due to his father’s deeds. Shocked into taking the blame for his deeds, Joe commits suicide, leaving a sense of choice to his son, who will acknowledge no other birthright. At first glance the play is a broadening of past themes. It is an expression of the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s deeds, to accept the truth of a world where in the notion of ‘community’ is a dynamic value rather than a plain devotion. It is an attack on materialistic values which are viewed as being in conflict with human standards, on a commercial pursuit for profits which is opposed to the portrayal of an ethic rooted in the predominance of human life and the need to accept a social agreement. Without a doubt Joe justifies himself by claiming that his own principles are those of the world wherein he functions. As Joe states, symbolically (Miller 1971, xii): Who worked for nothing in that war? When they work for nothing, I’ll work for nothing. Did they ship a gun or a truck out a Detroit before they got their price? Is that clear? It’s dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clear? Half the goddamn country is gotta go if I go. And Chris is pushed to accept this, grieving that “This is the land of the great big dogs, you don’t love a man here, you eat him! That’s the principle; the only one we live by—it just happened to kill a few people this time, that’s all. The world’s that way, how can I take it out on him?” (Miller 1971, 77) But he still keeps on pushing his claim of the principle until his father cannot exist with his remorse anymore, and his unexpectedly heightened feeling of sorrow. And as stated by Bloom (1987), this is the root of the buried theme of the play—an interest in remorse as a major human behavior component, and with self-centeredness as an image underlying the facade of romanticism. Father and son existed in psychological conflict to each other in All My Sons and thus embodied the opposing principles that shaped the play’s dramatic theme, while in another of Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, the Biff and his father, although adversaries, are more directly connected in their principles and there is hence more ironical sense in the determination of the central dramatic issue. Joe existed by the immoral principles, and although the issue of what the correct principles are, are merely explored on the surface, the audience could at least understand that his suicide was a rational outcome of his self-awareness. In contrast, the remark of Biff regarding his father: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong” (Miller 1949, 189) should be viewed in view of the retort of Charlie: “A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory” (Miller 1949, 189) as well as the pitiful begging of the dead salesman’s spouse: “Attention must be paid… There’s more good in him than in many other people” (Miller 1949, 189). The dead salesman, although he has times of half-done realization, never does find out that he has spent his life in a wrong way: and hence the play’s dramatic issue remains unsettled. But the death of the salesman is paradoxical and far more filled with tragedy than the death of Joe for in portraying it as the outcome of love and envisioning it as the ultimate deed of a person who plainly is valued more in death, Miller has stayed real to the irony that rests at the root of the play. Conclusions In Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, the determination of the underlying dramatic theme is visibly shown in the title. The ‘all my sons’ mentioned in the play are the pilots who lost their lives due to the defective parts sent by Joe Keller. The play never goes outside its very significant link to tragedy for it settles it essential dramatic issue quite plainly and thus falsify the contradiction that rests unexplored at its core. References Bloom, Harold. Arthur Miller. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. India: Pearson Longman, 1949. Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. New York: Penguin Books, 1971. Read More