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Act Two

Summary: Act Two: from the beginning of Act Two to when George arrives

Act Two takes place at dusk on the same day as Act One. It begins with Chris sawing off the broken part of the apple tree, leaving only the stump. Kate has prepared some grape juice for George, remembering that it was his favorite when he was young. While Joe naps, Kate tells Chris that Steve must hate Joe. When Ann appears on the porch, Kate goes inside. Chris tells Ann that they will tell Kate about their wedding plans that very night, and then he goes inside, too, leaving Ann alone.

Sue appears, looking for her husband, Jim. She and Ann discuss marriage, particularly about the need for financial security. Sue advises Ann to leave town after she and Chris marry, to start fresh somewhere else. She also reveals that Jim feels belittled and insecure by Chris’s success. Chris makes Jim long to be a researcher, his true passion. Sue even accuses Chris of stealing from the manufacturing plant, a judgment Ann immediately resents and refutes. Sue tells Ann that everyone in the neighborhood knows the truth about Joe and Steve and calls Chris’s idealism phony. When Sue exits and Chris appears, Ann shares their conversation about Joe. Chris makes it clear that he has never suspected that his father was guilty of the crime. He believes that Joe was falsely accused.

Joe enters his yard, and with Ann and Chris, he looks forward to a celebratory evening ahead in which he agrees they will share the wedding plans with Kate. Joe tells Ann that he would like her to offer that he set George up in their town to get him out of New York. He also wants to extend the invitation for Steve to work at the plant when he is paroled, a suggestion that Chris quickly dismisses as inappropriate.

Suddenly, Lydia appears from next door, intending to fix Kate’s hair for the big evening out, and Joe invents a ditty about “combing my Katie’s hair.” Jim, who had left earlier to pick up George at the train station, now enters alone and pulls Joe aside. Jim advises Joe that Chris should talk to George somewhere other than in the Keller house because he has “blood in his eye[s]” and Kate won’t be able to handle what he has to say, an observation that confirms Joe’s earlier fears. Jim also confides that George has come to take Ann home. Being a doctor, Jim has told George that Ann isn’t well, but Chris disagrees. When George finally appears, Chris welcomes him with a friendly handshake.

Summary: Act Two, continued: from when George arrives to when Joe reappears

Ann observes that George’s shirt is filthy as George looks at what used to be his house next door. When Sue appears and asks Jim if he wants to go to the beach, Chris introduces George to the couple. Sue and Jim invite George to see what they’ve done to the house, but George curtly replies that he prefers to remember it just the way it was, signaling an insistence on the reality of the past. George seems touched that Kate remembered that he liked grape juice.

George and Chris talk about Chris’s position at the plant and George’s work as a lawyer, work with which he is disillusioned. When Ann remarks on George’s hat, he says that he got it from Steve, which leads to a discussion of Steve’s condition. George says that Steve has grown “little” and then angrily tells Ann that she cannot marry Chris.

George confesses to Ann that they have treated Steve terribly. He goes on to explain that Steve told him exactly what happened on the day that the aircraft engines were shipped. He explained that Steve tried to get Joe to come into the plant that day, but Joe claimed that he was sick with the flu. On a phone call, Joe promised to take responsibility for the shipment, but that is not what happened later. George claims that Steve was too insecure to make such a big decision on his own and that Joe was the one in charge who oversaw every detail of the plant. When George heard the truth from Steve’s mouth, he realized that they all had been living a lie.

George wants to talk to Joe directly and confront him with the truth, but Ann begs him not to do it immediately and spoil a fun evening. Kate appears, happy to see George, but instantly comments on how he has aged and how he looks like a ghost. She wants to feed him, offers him juice, and suggests that they cook at home instead of going out. George wants to leave for the 8:30 train, but Kate wants him to stay for dinner.

Lydia appears, thrilled to see George. They were once romantically involved, and they reminisce a bit. Lydia exits to check with her husband, Frank, about Larry’s horoscope. Kate tells George that he should have stayed out of the war and married Lydia but that she has another prospect for him now. Chris remarks that this new prospect isn’t very good-looking.

Summary: Act Two, continued: from when Joe reappears to the end of Act Two

Joe reappears and shakes hands with George. George says that he will be returning to New York and asks Joe about what products his plant manufactures now. When Joe asks about Steve, George explains that he’s not well at all because of his soul. When Joe tells George that his father will always have a job at the plant, George responds that Steve “hates your guts, Joe,” and wishes harm to anyone who made money on the war. Joe says that Steve never knew how to own his actions and recalls a time when Steve left a heater on at the plant that nearly caused an accident. Joe recalls another time that Steve loaned money to someone who invested it poorly and blamed Steve for the poor investment, even calling him a swindler.

Kate joins them and repeats her wish for George to stay for dinner. Ann offers him a clean shirt and tie. When George tells Joe and Kate that they haven’t changed a bit, Joe replies that he doesn’t have time to get sick. Kate injects that Joe hasn’t been sick in fifteen years, a slip of the tongue that Joe quickly tries to refute by reminding her of his flu during the war. When George questions Kate’s memory, Joe immediately claims that he could not have gone into the plant that fateful day, but the damage has been done. George realizes the lie and calls Joe out on it.

Just then, Frank appears to tell Kate that the horoscope reveals that Larry might be alive since November 25 was a “fortunate day.” When Chris calls the notion insane, Kate asks why it couldn’t be possible. When George hears this, he surmises that Kate wants Ann to leave because she will not approve the marriage and has yet to accept that Larry is dead. A driver for Ann has arrived and honks the horn, but Chris insists that no one can tell Ann to leave. George reiterates that Kate has admitted that Joe has never been sick, a clear admission of his guilt. Kate has already packed Ann’s bag. Ann follows George up the driveway.

Chris confronts Kate, who admits that Ann doesn’t belong here. Chris threatens to leave and speaks the truth that Larry is dead. When Joe agrees with his son, Kate slaps Joe across the face and yells that she will never let Larry go. In a moment of fury, Kate admits that she cannot let Larry go because she knows the truth about Joe’s role in the calamity. Chris is dumbfounded, suddenly and immediately realizing that Joe has lied and has murdered twenty-one pilots. Joe claims that he never killed anyone, but Chris holds him responsible nonetheless. Joe tries to defend himself by claiming that he did it all for his family, for Chris. He claims that he never thought the engines would be installed and that by the time he realized what happened, it was too late. Chris explodes in fury at his father, calling him less than an animal, pounding on his father’s shoulder as the act ends in violence and disbelief.

Analysis: Act Two

In Act Two, the tension built up in Act One erupts into confusion, conflict, and anger, moving the plot toward its calamitous and tragic ending. The reality of the faulty munitions takes center stage as, one by one, the characters move from their sheltered circles of doubt and denial into the blinding light of truth. The one exception is Frank’s horoscope, which serves to reinforce Kate’s delusion that her son may still be alive, a delusion that will finally and inevitably topple in Act Three. In Act Two, Kate holds firm to her resolve, supported by no less than the stars above. With the exception of Bert, the entire cast of characters appears in Act Two, and each contributes to the chaos that ensues. Ann and George are the truth-bearers here; the Kellers are all complicit and will suffer for Joe’s sin.

The irony of Joe’s past deepens in Act Two. In Act One, he asks, “What have I got to hide?” In Act Two, this question turns into an observation about Steve that is actually about himself: “There are certain men in the world who rather see everybody hung before they’ll take the blame.” It is ironic that Joe commits a crime to save his family business so that his sons, Larry and Chris, wouldn’t have to start at the bottom of the ladder as he did. However, his actions cause him to lose them both—Larry to an early death and Chris to an imminent rejection of everything Joe has built and done.

It may be difficult to imagine that the world of All My Sons can become any more entangled, ensnared, and dark than it appears in Act Two, but it does. Act Two becomes a maelstrom of emotions and realities, including love, hate, dishonesty, disloyalty, and lies. The setting of the play shifts from morning in Act One to dusk in Act Two as the darkness intensifies and surrounds the family. Arthur Miller follows the path of the classical tragedies as the dead of night approaches.

The moment in which Kate slaps her husband marks the emotional climax of Act Two, the instant in which the couple finally clashes over Larry’s death. Joe has finally told Kate that she’s “been talking like a maniac” for three and a half years, and she dismisses him. Joe has always been the boss of the family and the business, but in this moment, things fall apart. Kate takes command, and Joe is relegated to second place by her violence and her accusations. Audiences must have witnessed a rare moment of feminine power in 1946, even though Kate’s power has been mutated by guilt, shame, and immeasurable grief. When she says to Chris, “God does not let a son be killed by his father,” she admits that Joe and she, too, are culpable. She also explicitly suggests that God may not exist at all, for indeed, this father, Joe, has killed his son or let him be killed.

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