All My Sons Summary
All My Sons is a play, written by Arthur Miller, which originally opened on Broadway in 1947. The play revolves around Joe Keller, a businessman whose faulty equipment has led to the deaths of US servicemen during World War II. Miller wrote the play as a modern Greek tragedy, his final attempt to find literary success. The eventual success of All My Sons contributed to Miller becoming one of the leading American playwrights of the 20th century.
- Act One - All My Sons opens on a Sunday morning, Joe Keller and his wife Kate are visited by their neighbor Frank, whom Kate has asked to prepare a horoscope of their son Larry, MIA during the war. Their other son, Chris, believes that Larry is dead, having disappeared shortly after Joe was arrested for selling defective parts to the Air Force. While Joe was exonerated, his partner Steve was convicted, and is still in prison at the play's opening.
- Act two - It becomes revealed that everyone believes Joe equally guilty in selling the cracked parts. Steve's son George arrives, and tells Joe that his father has implicated Joe in the scheme. Joe claims that everything he has done was to build a business for his two sons, but Chris remains furious with Joe.
- Act three - Chris disappears, and Kate pressures Joe into confessing. Joe is angry that his family appears to be turning on him. A letter from the missing Larry is revealed, where Larry plans to commit suicide over his father's actions. Although Joe agrees to turn himself in, in the final moments he kills himself instead.