The plot of All My Sons employs classic Greek tragedy patterns: order to chaos; peeling away layers until one gets to truth; and a past sin still reverberating in the present moment. The main conflict in the play is between Joe Keller and Ann Deever. Ann’s visit is the catalyst of the play’s rising tension. When she appears at the Keller home, she brings the truth about Larry with her and exposes it little by little until the play’s tragic conclusion. Joe’s dishonesty drives the action. Ann’s honesty, coupled with her brother George’s insights about their father, Steve, challenges Joe in every way. Joe wants his family to be intact, successful, healthy, and peaceful. He wants Chris to take over the business. He wants his wife, Kate, to finally let go of her obsessive delusions. He wants to put Larry’s disappearance to rest. He wants Steve to be released from prison and return to the business, not as a partner but as an employee. All these desires are uprooted by Ann, toppled and killed like the apple tree downstage. It is no coincidence that Ann’s appearance coincides with the windy destruction of this key symbol.

The play opens with an idyllic backyard scene in postwar middle America, but the peace does not last long. As characters enter and exit, various conflicts expose themselves, between husbands and wives, children and parents, former and present business partners, and pretense and reality. Layer by layer, illusion is revealed for what it is until the protagonist, Joe, and antagonist, Ann, confront each other face-to-face in Act Two. With the addition of George’s revelations about Steve, Ann is armed with even more evidence that the American Dream is not alive and well in the Keller family. The ideal has mutated into a sinister and eventually destructive monster. Joe and Kate’s dishonesty is finally revealed and overtly named. Their lies become so unavoidable that even Chris, the blindly loyal son and heir, must accept the truth, but even his acceptance is not yet the climax of the action. When Kate slaps Joe across the face, it may seem for a moment that the illusion has been broken and the play has reached its climax, but Act Three will peel away yet another layer of denial.

Miller skillfully withholds the actual climax of the play until the very last moments, after building the dramatic tension slowly through the acts, when Ann finally reveals Larry’s last letter to Chris, Joe, and Kate. In the letter, Larry confesses that he will fly his final mission and disappear, all because of what Joe and Steve have done to his fellow pilots and his faith in goodness and morality. Ann carries Larry’s truth back to his family and delivers it in the form of a letter. She is Larry’s messenger in these final moments of the play. There is no possible questioning of reality now and no possible avenue for redemption. Even Joe must accept the horrible truth of Larry’s death. Even if Joe were to go to jail, it would not bring Larry back. Like Oedipus seeing the truth of his own nature, a truth that was determined in the past, irrefutable and unchangeable, Joe sees the darkness of his own soul. His choice is clear. The only way out is the same choice that Larry made, that of self-destruction. Joe believes that the only way to save his living son, Chris, is by destroying himself and all that he represents. This spilling of family blood as a way of achieving catharsis is another characteristic of the Greek tragedies that Miller evokes.

Although All My Sons deals with the crime in Joe’s past, it is a play grounded in the present moment. As is common in classical Greek tragedies such as Oedipus Rex, events that have disturbed the moral order of the universe have happened long before the curtain rises. Although Miller uses foreshadowing many times, there are no flashbacks or shifts in point of view. The action barrels straight ahead, like a speeding train, fired bullet, or crashing plane, with great power and tremendous force. The action takes place in fewer than twenty-four hours, from morning to dusk to dead of night, and the set does not change, maintaining Aristotle’s principle of unity of action. In Act One, Chris comments, “We’re like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes in,” describing their wait for news about Larry. The inevitable action of the play is like waiting for a train that does come in, like a terrible reckoning that’s been crouching in the trees, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.