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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Money and Family versus Moral Integrity

Joe Keller cares most about money and family, yet his son, Chris, professes to care more about moral integrity. For the Keller family, the two values of taking financial care of one’s family and moral integrity are mutually exclusive. To serve his family and his economic security, Joe lied and betrayed his business partner and his country. To serve his own moral integrity, Chris rejects Joe’s values but sacrifices part of his own integrity in the process.

In the capitalist, postwar setting of the play, the pursuit of financial success is fueled by the American Dream. Joe shipped the defective engines because he wanted to make money and stay in business. His devotion to money and providing for his family corrupted him. Chris has always felt somewhat ashamed of his family’s wealth and strives for the greater good in society. Even the women in the play, Sue and Ann, talk about marriage as a source of economic security. Likewise, Jim Bayliss regrets his choice to practice traditional medicine rather than conduct research because of his wife Sue’s wish for material wealth. This worship of money is at the heart of the postwar American Dream, and the pursuit and rejection of money represent a central theme of All My Sons.

Taking Responsibility for One’s Actions

At the play’s center stand three questions of three interrelated responsibilities: Who is responsible for Larry’s suicide? Who is responsible for Steve Deever’s incarceration? Who is responsible for the deaths of the twenty-one American pilots? Tracing these lines of responsibility leads to one character: Joe Keller.

The first character to hold Joe accountable is his son, Larry, even though the family and the audience don't learn this until the play’s end. Larry’s suicide is his way of convicting his father just as Steve is convicted. Joe shirks his own responsibility, at first by giving the order and refusing to come to the factory and then later by taking his own life rather than face prison. At the time of the crime, Joe convinced himself that the engines would never be installed. Later, he allowed his partner to take the blame. Joe lies to his wife and son, Chris, about his guilt, although neither fully believes him. Even when Joe admits what he has done, he makes excuses for himself and fails to take full responsibility. It’s not until he hears Chris read Larry’s letter aloud that Joe feels his own culpability. His suicide is his admission, finally, of guilt.

Losing Trust

At the beginning of the play, the audience meets three families whose backyards adjoin: the Kellers, the Baylisses, and the Lubeys. Each family appears relatively happy, enjoying a summer Sunday in their backyards, joking, reading newspapers, and sharing anecdotes. As Act One unfolds, however, it becomes clear that trust is eroding both within the families and among the neighbors. When Ann appears, she questions the status quo by wanting to marry Chris and by challenging Kate’s denial of Larry’s death. Ann has lost trust in her own father, Steve, and is losing trust in Joe. By Act Two, trust between Kate and Joe continues to crumble and Chris quickly loses trust in Joe and the American Dream he represents. Perhaps Chris has already lost trust in Joe, but now he is just beginning to realize it.

By Act Three, trust has completely crumbled into mistrust and finally distrust as the seemingly loving families devolve into chaos, rage, and destruction. Children don’t trust their parents, and parents don’t trust each other. The younger generation has lost trust in the world of war and materialism. Tragically, Chris, the former commander, has lost trust in his dream of marriage and family.

Parents as Role Models

When Miller chose All My Sons as the title for his play, he indicated one of the work’s major themes: the exploration of the relationships among parents and their children. Wartime had dislocated many families by removing fathers and sons, and soldiers such as Chris and Larry formed new connections with their comrades in arms, often leading to questions about their traditional family ties. The entire nation restructured its definitions of family after the war, and previously solid roles of domestic and family life would never be the same.

Family roles and loyalties splinter when the Kellers face their guilt and Chris faces his own blind loyalty to Joe. Likewise, the Deever family has been broken when both children, Ann and George, reject their father, Steve, in prison. Fathers are no longer protectors and providers. Instead, they become the source of shame and confusion. Even the role of the quintessential mother crumbles in the hands and heart of Kate Keller. A title that seems to signal patriarchy in Act One takes an ironic twist when Joe finally accepts the deaths of the pilots and admits, “Sure he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.”

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