Here is my attempt at the essay we discussed yesterday. I have not proof read this and I did it in timed conditions.
This took about 35 minutes, so you have far longer to produce something similar.
What I found was that it really helped to know quite a few of these quotes in advance so that I wasn't wasting time searching through the book.
I think this is a good example regarding the amount written, the level of analysis and terms used, and links to context.
Have a read and see what you think...
‘All My Sons’, a mid-20th century play by Arthur
Miller, is a work which concerns itself with many themes which are often
prevalent in American literature such as the fulfilment of the American dream,
and what that means to the individual. Within this particularly important
context of the post-WWII period, Miller uses his characters to explore how the
war has affected the priorities of the characters within the play, and
specifically utilises some of the father/son relationships to accentuate this
theme. This scene comes at an extremely important part of the play as Joe’s
misdeeds have recently come to light, exploding his introverted world that he
had tried so hard to maintain, and it is here that we arguably see his true
feelings and motives behind his actions. It is also significant as we can see
how Miller uses Keller as a motif for selfishness and immorality, seemingly
pointing his finger at the audience and getting them to consider their own
values.
Within the extract, we can see that Joe displays a fickle
nature concerning his relationship with his only living son, Chris, by
essentially disowning him by saying, ‘Larry. That was a boy we lost.’ The use
of the deictic adverb ‘that’ coupled with the dynamic past participle verb ‘lost’
show that he does not currently feel that Chris would affect him in the same
way were he to leave. The use of the common noun ‘boy’ has an accusatory tone,
implying that Chris is lacking in masculinity compared to his brother. Perhaps
this is Miller’s way of showing how, to the older generation who lived through
the economic boom of the 1920s, the American dream will always be synonymous
with financial gain, and that Keller is far more loyal to this principle than
to his family as it is the only thing he can relate to. This idea is cemented
by Keller’s hyperbolic summary of Chris’ character when he says, ‘overcharge
two cents and his hair falls out’. This metaphor portrays Chris as
oversensitive and incompatible with the lifestyle which Keller knows so well.
Perhaps Keller feels that it is easier to disown his son and stay loyal to his
principles as disowning his principles would mean that he has to face his
guilt.
This seems to be supported by the ambiguity in Keller’s
statement that Kate and Chris are ‘all [Keller] ever lived for’, the determiner
‘all’ suggesting family loyalty, despite Keller’s earlier admissions that the
business was always his biggest priority. It is clear that, at this point in
the play, Joe is keen to limit damage to his own persona, proved by his
imperatives to Kate – who has often shown herself to be far more domineering in
the marriage – when he says ‘You’ll do that [tell Chris that she knows Larry is
dead.’ The contracted form of the modal verb of certainty ‘will’ shows that
Keller is desperate to preserve his own safety and freedom, even if it means
destroying his wife’s hopes and losing his son. Perhaps this is Miller’s way of
asking us to consider what we stand to lose by insisting in acting
immorally. Up until now, Keller has been
adamant that he will carry on lying to Kate about this subject, but his
repetition of the imperative, ‘You’ll tell him’ speaks of his desperation for
self-preservation, showing that he would rather lose a son that go to jail. The
fact that Joe allows himself to be interrupted, ‘Why should I…’ before
resigning himself to the fact that he should ‘go in the house’ when ordered to,
shows a shift in power. Kate’s use of imperatives shows that she is now in
control, and that Joe is willing to follow orders if it means he does not hear
anything uncomfortable such as the truth about Larry. This simply supports the
idea that Joe would rather maintain an idealised view of his son as someone
whose world ‘had a forty-foot front’ rather than admit that he and his son had
fundamentally different morals. By including this, Miller once more accentuates
how the older generation must alter to consider their responsibility to others.
This generational gap between Keller and Chris is
constructed right from the start of Act 1, where Miller establishes the
differences between Joe and Chris as Chris sarcastically apes and repeats his
father saying ‘lot of books’ and ‘all different’, creating a patronising tone
in relation to his father. Rather deliberately, Keller is introduced to us as ‘an
everyman’, the compound noun suggesting that he lacks malice and could be quite
similar to any one of us, and as an ‘uneducated man’, the affixed premodifying
adjective suggesting that he is stuck in his ways . Through this, it seems that
Chris is to be seen as the more progressive of the two, particularly when he
says that he sees being ‘inspired’ as a necessity, the adjective connoting that
Chris needs more than an introverted world where all he has is money. This
seems to be contrary to Joe’s way of life in almost every respect. Later on in
this act, we see tension rise between Keller and Chris where the stage
directions concerning Keller showing him becoming aggressive at the thought of
Chris leaving the business. Chris claims that ‘on this’ – the preposition and
deictic adverb connoting his love for Ann – he would leave. Keller reacts
visibly angrily to this ‘raising his fist’ to Chris’ jaw. The implication is
here that this quite everyman is angered when presented with the possibility
that all of his efforts to garner wealth will come to nothing. At this stage,
we do not realise the extent to which he is simply protecting himself.
We see a total difference in the characters of Chris and
Keller further on in Act 1 when he recounts his experience of war to Ann,
saying it ‘takes a little time to toss that off’. The adjective ‘little’ and
common noun ‘time’ showing how he is affected by the war all these years later.
Chris has witnessed the love that can be expressed between friends first hand
and we can see that he feels personal responsibility for their loss when he
uses the active voice to say that he ‘lost’ them – the verb connoting his sense
of responsibility. Unlike his father, Chris has been affected by the war and
can see how one person’s actions can affect the destiny of another, saying, ‘They
didn’t die, they killed themselves for each other’. The distinction made by
Chris between the verb ‘die’ and hyperbolic phrasal verb ‘killed themselves’
shows how the selflessness of others has come to serve as a life lesson to him.
We know, however, that the older members of the Keller family do not feel this
responsibility as Keller confidently claims ‘Larry never flew a P50’. Here,
Miller uses proleptic irony, counting on the fact that the audience will already
have identified Keller as the tragic hero. It is likely that the watching audience
will have come to the conclusion that Keller’s actions will have indirectly
caused Larry’s death due to the symbolism of the broken tree right at the start
of the play, and Keller’s utter refusal to take any responsibility for his
actions – a key part of his personal hamartia.
Towards the end of the play, in Act 3, we see an extremely
tragic conclusion of the relationship between Chris and Keller. Firstly, the ‘disownership’
shown earlier by Keller is reciprocated by Chris where he says to his father ‘I
know you are no worse than any other man, but I thought you were better’. Like
all literary father/son relationships, Chris has idolised his father throughout
– the comparative adjective ‘better’ put into parallel phrasing is testament to
this. However, perhaps Miller here is hinting at Chris’ personal bildungsroman that,
having spent his childhood under the spell of his father’s American dream, he
has now found this to be spurious and false. Instead, Chris uses interrogatives
and metaphor to question his father’s thinking, saying ‘Who was flying those
planes, pigs?’, the metaphorical plural noun connoting the notion that Keller
sees people outside of this ‘unity of place’ as being so insignificant that
they may as well be less than human. Ultimately, just like in classical drama
which influence Miller so much, Keller pays the price for his misdeeds, meaning
that his sins are not revisited on his son. Instead, Miller chooses to use Kate
as a moral judge at the end of the play, when she uses minor imperative
sentences to instruct Chris how to conduct the rest of his life. By saying ‘forget
now. Live’, it appears that this is Miller’s way of instructing the audience
that kindness and responsibility are the way forward, whereas the culmination
of wealth can only end in disaster.
One other father/son relationship which it fraught within
the play is that of George and Steve. Again, George is used as a character who
seems desperate for justice and truth, having earlier disowned his father due
to the criminal charges which were brought against him. Clearly George does not
condone his fathers actions, referring to him as ‘a little man’, the premodifying
adjective implying a sense of shame on George’s part. However, it cannot be
ignored that Steve is serving his time, rightfully, for the crimes he has
committed and, with this in mind, it appears that Keller wants us to see that
this is the desired outcome for people who act irresponsibly. George is adamant
that he wants Keller to pay the same price as his father, reminding Joe of his
responsibility saying ‘you can’t take responsibility over a phone call’. The
abstract noun ‘responsibility’ places blame firmly at Joe’s door, and gives
George the righteous anger he needs to complete his ‘the same man’ speech,
where he uses anaphora to repeatedly question the likelihood of his father
making such an important decision alone.
In conclusion, there is clearly a deeper motive employed by
Miller when revealing the relationships between the fathers and sons in his
play. If we view Chris and Keller as a microcosm of society, for example, it
seems that Miller wants to accentuate the differences between the generations
in order to see how damaging it can be for someone only to care about their own
‘back yard’. The fraughtness in the relationship grows right the way through
the play, shown through stage directions and dialogue, until the dramatic
explosion of emotion shown in the latter parts. Through the resolution of the
play with Chris being told to live, the audience are left with a moral message,
that taking responsibility for each other is the option which should be taken
wherever possible.
