All My Sons and The American Dream

Kulsum Khan
Dr. Nikhat Taj

EOB-651
April 30, 2020
ALL MY SONS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
It was in 1931 that the ‘American Dream’ was first defined, by James Truslow Adams, in
his Epic of America when he stated, "The American Dream is that dream of a land in
which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for
each according to ability or achievement." A dream where no person was defined or
judged or limited by their nationality, caste, creed or socio-economic status, and was
free to achieve success, respect and wealth, according to the effort they put in. As
John Green observes, “In America, if you can work, you can work.”
The idea of the American Dream is one that has appeared in art, especially literature,
multiple times over the years. Writers-especially those writing in the early to mid-
twentieth century-often made it a central theme of their work. Among these writers
were the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Langston Hughes and Arthur Miller,
among others.
Fitzgerald and Miller are perhaps the most widely acknowledged and acclaimed for
employing this theme; Fitzgerald for The Great Gatsby (1925) and Miller for his plays All
My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949).
America is seen as the land of opportunity, where anyone could make their fortune no
matter their background. It was a promise of prosperity and stature-to have a good
name in society, to have a happy family and a good, steady income. It was widely
regarded as something people all over the globe aspired to fulfil, but Miller’s plays
portray it in a different light. In All My Sons, Arthur Miller exposes the American Dream
as wishful and selfish, through the character of Joe Keller. Joe Keller is a man governed
by one rule-to succeed in life, and earn respect for himself and his family. He has been
raised to believe that it is a dog-eat-dog world, and only the competent will survive. As
quoted in the introduction to the play, he “is a man for whom survival is a primary
necessity,” (Bigsby xii).
Keller has grown up tough, he started working from a young age and slowly built his
business. His lack of education has always galled him, and been a source of low self-
esteem. He is described in the opening of the play as “a business man these many years,
but with the imprint of the machine-shop worker and boss still upon him. When he
reads, when he speaks, when he listens, it is with the terrible concentration of the
uneducated man for whom there is still wonder in many commonly known things, a
man whose judgements must be dredged out of experience and a peasant-like common
sense,” (Miller 5-6). He laments the lack of solid labour that he grew up doing, and is
remorseful to see how more people are gaining higher education-a privilege he couldn’t
afford-which we can gauge from his exchange with Chris and Ann:
CHRIS [to Ann]: You ever meet a bigger ignoramus?
KELLER: Well, somebody’s got to make a living.
ANN: That’s telling him.
KELLER: I don’t know, everybody’s getting' so Goddamn educated in this country
there’ll be nobody to take away the garbage. (Miller 48)
Money is an important matter, as every character seems to be involved in making

decisions, or has made decisions, on financial terms. Joe Keller insists that his business
is for his family, as he says to his wife Kate, “You wanted money, so I made money. What
must I be forgiven?” (Miller 76), while his son Chris talks of building ‘something that he
can give himself to’-a family with a wife and children, but upon Ann’s acceptance of his
proposal, immediately exclaims, ‘Oh Annie, Annie...I’m going to make a fortune for
you!’(Miller 36) Even their neighbours, Frank Lubey and Jim Bayliss have lives that are
dictated on monetary terms-Frank giving up medical research on his wife’s insistence
for a more general practice with a steadier income, while Jim living a financially secure
life as a result of never having never gone to serve in the war.
To Miller, the American Dream was something hazardous, something that led the
common man astray, by deceiving him with false promises of affluence, and made him
selfish and narrow-minded, blind to the realities of the world before him, enamoured
only with the one that existed in his dreams. The pride one would take in amassing their
own fortune would only create rifts in between themselves and others, as they
competed amongst themselves to outdo the others, do better, do more, have more, to
never have to stoop low enough to have to ask for help in any way. It promoted ideals of
self-reliance, self-discipline, and self-sufficiency. As Sue Bayliss says, in the second act of
the play, “You can never owe somebody without resenting them,” (Miller 44), and it is
the anticipation of this resentment, the fear of having to owe someone-this is what leads
Joe Keller to ship out faulty parts. He is unable to fulfil his social responsibility simply
because he sees himself as someone who has struggled to build what he has, and he did
not have the help he wanted.
When Chris finally hears his father acknowledge his crime, Keller grows hysterical,
trying to get Chris to see why he did what he did:
CHRIS: I want to know what you did, now what did you do? You had a hundred and
twenty cracked engine-heads, now what did you do?
KELLER: If you’re going to hang me, then I...
CHRIS: I’m listening, God Almighty, I’m listening!
KELLER: You’re a boy, what could I do! I’m in business, a man is in business; a hundred
and twenty cracked, you’re out of business; you got a process, the process don’t work
you’re out of business; you don’t know how to operate, your stuff is no good; they close
you up, they tear up your contracts, what the hell’s it to them? You lay forty years into a
business and they knock you out in five minutes, what could I do, let them take forty
years, let them take my life away? (Miller 69)
Joe Keller has always known a world where when push comes to shove, it is every man
for himself, there is no room for people outside the individual and the family because
the world can take things away from a person as surely as it can give them those things,
and that is the ultimate fear of the self-made individual. Bigsby notes, that since Joe
Keller “lived through the Depression, he knows how fragile a grasp he, or anyone, has on
the world,” (Bigsby xii). For Joe, survival is everything-not just to be alive, but a way to
maintain being alive-to deny involvement with the world, and refute the consequences
of his actions.
All My Sons portrays a man whose morals are at odds with the society, but for Miller,
there was a vast number of Joe Kellers who existed in the world, that there were many
people profiting off the war in illicit ways, and that it was something that was almost
common knowledge. In an interview, Miller recalls, “The average person was violating
rationing. All the rules were being violated every day but you wanted not to mention it.”
In the introduction to his Collected Plays, Miller observes, “When all public voices were
announcing that great day when industry and labour were one, my personal experience
was daily demonstrating that beneath the slogans nothing had changed......[it was] an
unveiling of what I believed everybody knew but nobody publicly said,” (Bigsby xii-xiii).
Joe Keller was a man who chased after the American Dream, hoping to have it all, but
instead wound up with a business that is successful but malignant. As Miller saw it, the
American Dream remained little more than a broken promise, for most-it was simply
another facade put up by the capitalist system. The American Dream, Miller claims,
“operates against the interests of society and of humankind,” (Aziz 8).
Joe Keller committed a grievous crime, but it was not unheard of, and while such an act
would be condemned by society, it would shock no one. Joe Keller is not just a man at
fault, he is also a man who grew up wanting a better life for himself and his family. As
Kate Keller laments, “Honest to God, it breaks my heart to see what happened to all the
children. How we worked and planned for you, and you end up no better than us,”
(Miller 58). The American Dream filled Joe-and many others-with hopes, and an
unswerving commitment to see those hopes fulfilled, but at the end of the day, it
remained precisely what it was-a dream.
REFERENCES:
-Bigsby, Christopher. Introduction. All My Sons, by Arthur Miller, 1947, Penguin, 2000,
pp xi-xiii.
-Ibna Aziz, Muhammed Hussain. “All My Sons: American Dream & Postwar chaotic
situation.” pp 1-8. Academia,
https://www.academia.edu/5388472/All_My_Sons_American_Dream_and_Postwar_cha
otic_situation
-Green, John. “Is the American Dream Real?” YouTube, uploaded by vlogbrothers, March
19, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYGc8-L_NmE
- “The American Dream -- Englisch --”. YouTube, uploaded by Wadnoun Wadnouni, April
25, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpwFP1nzoo

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How does the play portray the American Dream?

How does Joe Keller view the world and survival?

Kulsum Khan

Dr. Nikhat Taj

ALL MY SONS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Money is an important matter, as every character seems to be involved in making

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