All My Sons Essay (English)

“All my sons” is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1947. The play shows the tragic story of the Keller’s, a well respected family in the neighborhood, who fell into disgrace when the head of the family , named Joe, admits the crime made in the factory he owned by shipping damaged aircraft engine cylinder heads, thus provoking the death of 21 soldiers in WWII. Luckily for Joe, he was exoneratedof the charges of the manslaughter he finally caused, on the other hand his partner was found guilty and had to go to jail, making Joe hide the whole truth along the time. And he hid the truth until the arrival of Ann, the daughter of Joe’s partner (and widow of his dead son Larry), who went to visit them three years after the accident in order to get engaged with the remaining son of Joe, Chris.Towards the end of the story, when the whole truth is uncovered because of the letter that Ann brought with her, this last will contained the confession of Larry’s suicide. After reading this, Chris tried to imprison his father but before he could actually take him in front of the justice, Joe commits suicide by shooting himself. With this last action the story ends in the very bittersweet endingof “All my sons”. But the fact that calls most of the attention is Joe’s suicide, because you start to wonder, Was Joe’s demise a correct way to atone for his own sins; or an incorrect way to escape the justice he deserved?
First of all we have to understand that Joe’s suicide is driven by his own guilt. We can clearly see this, if we compare two of the final scenes of the play. On the firstone, When Joe is being confronted by his son Chris, and later, after reading Larry’s letter. An example of the former idea is: “Keller: What should I want to do? (Chris is Silent) Jail? You want me to go to jail? If you want me to go say so! Is that where I belong? Then tell me so!” (“All my sons”, Act III). In that scene Keller acts in a defiant way when he’s confronted by his son Chris, we seealso in the same paragraph that he acts furiously and angered; On the other hand, if we compare that scene with the following event, after Joe reads the confessional letter of his son Larry his attitude changed dramatically: “Keller: (looking at the letter in his hand) Then what is this if it isn’t telling me? Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, Iguess they were. I’ll be right down”. (All my Sons act III) here we see Keller in a completely different attitude, he is far more humble, and we clearly read he regrets every action he did. So we can conclude that he felt really guilty because at first he is denying any responsibility for the guilt, but then he realizes his wrong deed and thus he lets Chris put him in jail, but he finally ends upkilling himself.
Also is really clear that Joe finally understands the implications of his actions with the letter of his son Larry. This is partly because Joe finally understands that his family is not an island away from the rest of the world, when he reads the letter sent by Larry he finally realizes how much wrong has he done to the people and the family of the people and so on, this isexplained in a brief exchange between of words between Chris and his Mother, Kate:
Mother: The war is over! Didn’t you hear? It’s over!
Chris: Then that what was Larry to you? A stone that fell into the water? It’s not enough for him to be sorry. Larry didn’t kill himself to make you and Dad sorry.
Mother: What more can we be!
Chris: You can be better! Once and for all you know there’s a universe ofpeople outside and you’re responsible for it, and unless you know that, you threw away your son because that’s why he died. (All my sons, Act III).
In this quick exchange of words could be a another reason for Joe’s suicide, if Joe came at the same conclusion that Chris made with his mother, means that he understood his actions affected more than his family, and he was responsible for them, but...