All My Sons by Arthur Miller : A Detailed summary

 

Act One 

The play begins on a Sunday morning in August and is set in the back yard of the Keller home, located on the outskirts of an unidentified American town, a couple of years after the end of World War II. Joe Keller, who has been reading classified ads in a newspaper, sharing jokes with his neighbours, Dr. Jim Bayliss and Frank Lubey. He explains that the apple tree had split in half during the night. 

It is a source of some concern, for the tree is a memorial for Joe’s son, Larry, and its destruction might upset Joe’s wife, Kate. Frank refers to it as Larry’ s tree and reminds that August is Larry’ s birth month. He plans to check Larry’ s horoscope, to see if the date on which he was reported missing in action was a favorable or unfavorable day for him. Sue, Jim’s wife, arrives and sends Jim home to talk on the phone with a patient. She is followed by Frank’s wife, Lydia, who reports a problem with a toaster (an electrical device for making food).

 After the others leave, Joe and Chris talk about the tree and the fact that Kate was outside when it fell. She has never stopped hoping that Larry will return, still alive. Her failure to accept his death is a major obstacle for Chris, who hopes to marry Ann. Kate can only think of Ann as Larry’ s girl, and she cannot accept a marriage of Chris and Ann without first accepting her son’s death. 

Kate enters and thinks about the significance of the fallen tree. She also speaks of a dream in which she saw Larry and expresses her belief that he shall return soon. Exasperated, Chris talks of trying to forget Larry. She sends him off to get an aspirin tablet.  Meanwhile Ann arrives and she pointedly rejects Kate’s hope that Larry is still alive. She also discloses that she is unwilling to forgive her father (Steve Deever), now in jail, as Joe once was, convicted of providing the Army Air Force with 121 defective cracked cylinder heads. The parts were used in the engines of P-40 fighter planes, twenty-one of which crashed. 

Joe was later exonerated and he passes the complete responsibility to his partner Steve Deever. Now Ann strongly believes that his own father is the man behind the death of Larry. Yet Kate knows the truth : Joe ordered his partner to weld the cracked cylinder heads and hide the defect. 

After Joe and Kate leave, Chris confesses his love to Ann, and she ardently confirms her own for him. She complains his long delay in disclosing his feelings, and he explains that it took him a long time to shake free from a guilt he felt for proposing her. They are interrupted when Ann is told that her brother, George, is on the phone. 

As she exits, Joe and Chris discuss the fact that George is in Columbus, visiting his father in jail. Ann is heard talking on the phone, trying to make calm her angry brother, while Joe speculates as to the possibility that George and Ann may be trying to open the criminal case again. Ann then comes out to tell them that George is coming to visit that same evening. 

Act Two 

It is late afternoon on the same day. Kate enters to find Chris cuts up the fallen apple tree. After telling Chris that Joe is steeping, she asks Chris to tell Ann to go home with George. In fact she is afraid that Steve Deever’ s hatred for Joe would infect his children, and she wants her to leave. 

When Ann appears, Kate returns to the house. Ann wants Chris to tell his mother about their marriage plans, and he promises to do so that evening. As he leaves, Sue enters, looking for her husband. She and Ann discuss Ann’s marriage plans. Sue encourages her to move away after her marriage. They also discuss the ruthless and unethical business practices of Joe and tells Ann that everyone knows that Joe was guilty as Steve Deever. 

When Chris returns, Sue goes in the house to see if she can calm Kate down. Ann tells Chris that Sue hates him, and that the people of the community believe that Joe should be in jail. But Chris firmly believes in his father’s innocence and tells her that he can not put any stock in what the neighbours believe. 

Joining them in the backyard, Joe tells to the young lovers that he wants to find George a good local job, and then announces that he even wants to hire Steve Deever when he is released from prison. Chris is adamantly opposed, believing that Deever had wrongly implicated his father, and he does not want Joe to give him a job. Joe exits. 

Having picked up George at the train station, Jim Bayliss enters quickly from the driveway. Jim warns Chris that George has “blood in his eye,” and that Chris should not let him come into the Keller yard. However, Chris welcomes George as a friend, but George’s behavior shows he is in exasperation.

 As a result of visiting his father, he is convinced that Joe knew about the cracked cylinder heads but ordered Deever to ship them anyway, and he is now decide on stopping Ann from marrying Chris. He presents his father’s account of the day the cracked cylinder heads were made, but Chris, believing in his father’s innocence, tries to make him leave.

 Joe enters and asserts that Steve Deever only blames Joe because Steve, unable to face his faults, could never admit his mistakes. George seems almost at ease, but when Kate makes a  blunder,  disclosing that Joe had not been ill in fifteen years, George becomes rage. Joe’s claim was that he had been home with pneumonia when the defective parts were doctored up and shipped out by Deever; George realizes that Joe is a liar.

 

Finally realizing the truth, Chris angrily confronts his father, who lamely tries to defend his actions as “business.” Chris, profoundly hurt and disillusioned, beats furiously on his father’s shoulders and goes out.

 

Act Three

It is 2:00 AM of the following morning. Alone, Kate waits for Chris to return. Jim joins her and asks what has happened; he then reveals that he has known about her husband’s guilt for some time.

Jim exits just as Joe comes in. Kate tells him that Jim knows the truth. Meanwhile, he is concerned about Ann, who has stayed in her room since Chris left. He talks, too, of needing Chris’s forgiveness.

 Ann enters and hesitantly gives Kate a letter that she had received from Larry after Joe and her father were convicted. Chris returns and tells his father that he cannot forgive him. Ann takes the letter from Kate and gives it to Chris, who reads it aloud.

Composed just before Larry’s death, it tells of his plan to take his own life in shame over what his father had done. It suddenly becomes clear to Joe that Larry believed that all the fighter pilots who perished in combat were Joe’s sons. Chris confirms his plan to turn Joe over to the authorities.

 Suddenly, a shot is heard from the house. Chris enters the house, presumably to find his father’s body. He returns to his mother’s arms, shocked and crying, and she tells him to forget what has happened and live his life.