All My Sons

Chris Keller is an idealistic young man. He believes in America and the ideals of American society to such an extent that he refuses to acknowledge what is seemingly apparent to everyone else. According to his neighbors, he is almost too idealistic. Sue does not believe that any intelligent person could sincerely be as idealistic as Chris. Despite Sue’s cynical comments, Chris is sincere in his idealism. He genuinely wants to believe the best about people, including his family and his country. He wants to believe that he is working for a greater good and that World War II—in which he fought—was carried out in defense of truth, justice, and morality. Chris’s relationships with his family are conditioned by his idealism. He lost his brother to the war, and he wants to honor Larry’s memory. Chris’s insistence on honesty means that he cannot bring himself to perpetuate his mother’s delusions. The idealistic Chris wants to be honest with his mother and his brother’s death. His belief in the greatness of America also distracts him from his father’s guilt. According to several of the neighbors, everyone in the community immediately recognized that Joe was guilty of something, even if the court exonerated him. Chris is so invested in the goodness and morality of American institutions—from the courts to his own family—that he cannot imagine them being dishonest. Papers from the court that declare his father innocent simply must be true, Chris believes, as his idealism cannot conceive of a world in which a man would be able to get away with murder.

During one of their conversations, Chris confesses to Ann that he has not reckoned with the trauma of his past. He tells her a story about how he led a small squad of men into a deadly situation. Chris lost most of the men, and he blames himself for their deaths. This guilt helps to explain his rampant idealism. Chris must believe that the sacrifices of these men, as well as the death of his brother Larry, were in support of a greater good. He needs to believe that he was fighting for a good and moral world, not the corrupt and cynical one he discovers on returning to America. Just as Joe refuses to acknowledge anything that might cause him to change his understanding of his identity, Chris refuses to entertain the idea that the deaths of the men under his command were in vain. As the truth becomes clear, Chris realizes with a slow, dawning horror that his father is responsible for the deaths of many men. Joe, far more than Chris, represents the American ideals for which those men lost their lives. This idea is tragic and intolerable for Chris. He becomes incensed because he has not only been forced to change his understanding of his father and his country, but he has been forced to reckon with the meaningless of his own pain.

At the end of the play, Chris returns to the house to confront his father. He uses dehumanizing language, suggesting that his father is worse than an animal for what he has done. The strength of his language and the intensity of his anger are a far cry from the idealistic, quiet Chris who began the play with the hope of marrying Ann and building a quiet life for himself. Chris is furious because that idealism is gone forever. He cannot continue as he once did, as everything in his world has changed. Despite the speed and intensity of this change, however, Chris cannot completely alter himself. After Joe takes his own life, Chris rushes out of the house. His first instinct, as ever, is to take responsibility. He blames himself for his father’s sins, feeling this new tragedy as an extra burden upon him. Chris emerges as the play’s most tragic character, whose shattered idealism is compounded by even more guilt.

Kate Keller has been dealing with her son’s disappearance for three years. After Larry went missing, Kate refused to accept that he might be dead. She maintained this delusion in contrast to her husband and surviving son, who both accept that Larry is almost certainly dead. Kate is absolutely determined to continue believing that Larry is alive, and she turns to increasingly desperate means to perpetuate this delusion. Whether God, astrology, or simply the travails of fortune and fate, she scrambles for anything that might validate her belief. News articles about missing people returning or an astrology chart made by a neighbor provide Kate with no proof of her son’s survival but—absent a body or a grave—she can convince herself that she has as much (or even more) evidence than her doubters. Kate is so desperate to believe that her son is alive that she completely surrenders all her agency over her life, giving up everything to an imagined higher power that dictates the flow of her existence. As such, Kate surrenders control over her life in exchange for the flimsy delusion that Larry may be alive.

Beneath Kate’s stated positions, however, she possesses a subtle cynicism. For many years, she has suspected that her husband was not actually ill on the day he skipped work to frame Steve for shipping the faulty engines. When she accidentally reveals in front of George that her husband hasn’t been sick in fifteen years, she swiftly corrects herself, suggesting that she realizes the delicate foundation on which her husband’s innocence is constructed. Kate is able to perpetuate the delusion of her husband’s guilt, even as the evidence mounts against him. Her advice to her husband is to be smart, cautioning him to be pragmatic and cynical as she does not truly believe that his innocence can stand up to any kind of scrutiny. Just as she perpetuates the delusion about Larry’s survival rather than confront the reality of his death, she tries to help her husband maintain the illusion of his innocence rather than acknowledge the reality of his guilt. Kate constructs and maintains a comforting but false reality through constant, willful ignorance and self-delusion.

As the play develops, however, Kate cannot maintain her delusions any longer. The truth becomes overwhelming. Just as the tree—planted in memory of Larry’s disappearance—collapses and lets a swath of light into the garden, the return of Ann to the house floods Kate’s life with an unignorable reality. The light is let in and she cannot hide in the darkness any longer. This is especially true when she reads the letter Larry wrote to Ann. The suicide note resists all Kate’s attempts to rationalize and explain away its existence. As Joe breaks down and confesses to his guilt, Kate’s delusions collapse. Not only must she accept that her son is really dead, but Joe soon takes his own life, leaving her with half the family she once had and no ability to console herself with comfortable lies. Larry’s letter and the immediate brutality of Joe’s suicide overwhelm Kate’s ability to delude herself any longer. No astrology or vision can contend with the truth of her husband’s body. She finds herself comforting her son with simple, honest platitudes. She reassures him. At the same time, however, she is attempting to reassure herself. She calls on him to forget what has happened and live his life, desperately hoping that he can shield himself from the truth through denial, as she once did.