How Miller Presents Joe Keller as a Tragic Hero in All My Sons

How Miller Presents Joe Keller as a Tragic Hero in All My Sons

Joe Keller is a man who loves and values his family very much. Like

most Americans he has given everything so he can have the big house,

the fancy car and the bulging wallet. He has given everything so he

can have the American Dream. Unfortunately for Keller, everything

isn't as perfect as it seems.

"All My Sons" is a very tragic play. It shows how a man can sacrifice

everything including the honour of his name to make his family

prosperous. This struggle for wealth and material goods involves

Keller doing an awful crime because he wants his family to be wealthy.

This is the cause of Keller's downfall.

In "All My Sons" Miller examines the morality of a man who places his

narrow responsibility to his immediate family above his wider

responsibility to the men who rely on the integrity of his work. "All

My Sons" shows Keller placing his family in front of society.

At the end of "All My Sons" Keller disappears offstage and shoots

himself. This is a very tragic thing to happen because all Keller

wanted was a happy family. When Chris finds out that Keller, his

father, had allowed faulty cylinder heads to be sent out of his

factory, Keller proves to the audience that he wanted good to come

from it by saying "what the hell did I work for? That's only for you,

Chris, the whole shootin' match is for you" on page 102 and "For you,

a business for you!" on page 158. This tells the audience that Keller

was a very hard worker and that all the hard work he did was for his

family. After hearing this Keller doesn't sound like a murderer or a

killer at all. He sounds like a very loving and devoted father and

husband who may have done something wrong but ...

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...admires him for being able to wriggle his

way out of a prison sentence. They admire him for how clever he was to

lie and pin the blame on someone else. I think this is a very corrupt

society and I think that is what Miller was trying to portray to the

audience in "All My Sons". Miller wanted to get across to the

audiences his views on American society.

I think Miller writes about another broader tragedy in the play

besides Keller's tragedy. This tragedy is the society we live in today

and how nobody looks out for each other. It is all about the survival

of the fittest nowadays. This is what Chris tries to stand up against

throughout the play.

Keller's tragedy in "All My Sons" is that he works so hard for the

American Dream and at the end of the play he shoots himself. By doing

this he is giving up everything he has worked so hard for over his

life.