A Farewell to Arms - Conflicts & Forgiveness Within Fami
Uploaded by Quest4Glory on Jul 05, 2004
Essay - "All My Sons"
"There’s nothing’ he could do that I wouldn’t forgive. Because he’s my son. Because I’m his father and he’s my son." That is a quote about forgiveness, whether or not deciding to choose to forgive is a very personal, and sensitive subject. Imagine what it would be like to have to decide to forgive a close relative for the murder of 21 men. That is the main subject in the three act play, All My Sons, by Arthur Miller.
Joe Keller and Herbert Deever are two ordinary men, trying to succeed in life. They ran a machine shop during the war that produced airplane parts. "The night foreman came and showed him the cylinder heads... they were coming out of the process with defects. So Dad went directly to the phone and called here and told Joe to come down right away. But the morning passed. No sign of Joe. So Dad called again. By this time he had over a hundred defective. The Army was screaming for stuff and Dad didn’t have anything to ship. So Joe told him... on the phone he told him to weld, cover up any cracks in any way he could, and ship them out." That is a passage from the play and is a very important scene, where the truth comes out about what the two men did. In a state of panic, the men let defective parts which went into airplanes be shipped to the Army. They were used, causing the death of 21 men. Keller and Deever were brought to trial, where Keller went free and Deever went to prison.
At the same time during the war, Joe Keller’s son, Larry was pronounced missing. Kate Keller, Joe’s wife and mother of Larry and Chris, went crazy about the report of Larry missing. She is described in her early 50's, a woman of uncontrolled inspirations and an overwhelmed capacity for love. Like any mother, she is in doubt that her son may be dead. She still awaits the day when he will come walking up the road and everything will be fine again. She keeps his room the way he left it, with his clothes in the closet and his shoes shined. Kate is very disturbed by Larry being missing, even three and a half years later.
Ann Deever is the daughter of Herbert Deever. She is described as a pretty...