All My Sons

All My Sons takes place in a small American town in August, a few years after World War II. The events of the play occur on a single set, the back yard of the Keller home, where a tree has recently been torn down by a storm. The Kellers are solidly middle-class and have a working-class background. They are not rich, but they are financially comfortable, and there is a sense throughout the play that they worked hard to reach this state of stability.

Arthur Miller stated that the issue of relatedness is the main one in All My Sons.  Protagonist of the play Keller thinks that he has to answer only his family. He has no such connection with society. He has done crime for his family.  Principal contention is that Keller is wrong in his claim that there is nothing greater than the family, since there is a whole world to which Keller is connected. To cut yourself off from your relationships with society at large is to invite tragedy of a nature both public (regarding the pilots) and private (regarding the suicides). The family is also presented as a unit that can be corrupted and damaged by the actions and denials of its individuals, a small-scale example of the way individual actions can corrupt society.


All My Sons is a play about the past. It is inescapable--but how exactly does it affect the present and shape the future? Can crimes ever be ignored or forgotten? Most of the dialogue involves various characters discovering various secrets about the recent history of the Keller family.

How do we deceive ourselves and others? We select things to focus on in life, but do we also need to deny certain things in order to live well? People create their own morality and always tried to justify themselves. We preserve our memory the way we want and in doing so we always portray ourselves innocent. We blame the circumstances which are responsible for actions.


Keller argues that his actions during the war were defensible ass requirements of good business practice. He also frequently defines himself as an uneducated man, taking pride in his commercial success without traditional book learning. Yet, his sound business sense actually leads to his downfall. As Balram Halwai did in ‘The White Tiger’. Concept of entrepreneurship is described well.

Miller points out the flaw with a merely economic interpretation of the American Dream as business success alone. Keller sacrifices other parts of the American Dream for simple economic success. Miller critiques a system that would encourage profit and greed at the expense of human life and happiness.