montana rep 2016...miller’s later career was also incredibly prolific, producing film adaptations...

MontanaRepertorytheatre

AUDIENCERESOURCEBOOKLETPrepared byCohen ambrose, MFa, Ma

Contents:

page thReePlay SynoPSiS

page fouRthe PlaywrightCaSt / CharaCterS

page sixinSide the direCtor’S notebook

page sevendeSign and ProduCtion

page ninehiStoriCal Context: gearing uP to Fight wwii

page tentheatriCal Context: arthur Miller and the CoMMon Man

page elevenkeller’S Moral dileMMa: the FaMily vS. the ColleCtivebibliograPhyFurther reading

umartsCollege of Visual and Performing ArtsSchool of Theatre & Dance

university of montanamissoula, montana 59812

MONTANA REp audienCe reSourCe booklet / www.montanarep.org 2016 national tour / ALL MY SONS

Montana Rep is funded in part by grants from the Montana arts Council (an agency of state government), the dramatists guild, and the Shubert Foundation, with support from the Montana State legislature, the university of Montana, the Montana Cultural trust, northwestern energy, dr. Cathy Capps, dr. Sandy Sheppard, Jay kettering & gwen Mckenna, and Jean Morrison.

© 2015 Montana repertory theatre

2016national tour

I am grateful to be part of Montana Rep’s revival of All My Sons, the award-winning play that helped launch the successful and critically acclaimed career of one of America’s greatest twentieth-century playwrights. A uniquely American play, All My Sons established Arthur Miller as a powerful storyteller with keen insight into the struggles of everyday men and women. Miller’s intense psychological probing and honest portrayals reveal the depth of his understanding and compassion.

All My Sons, written about the post-World War II experiences of my father’s generation, continues to resonate with today’s audiences. I first encountered this play in the years after the Vietnam conflict and recently saw the Broadway hit revival as news reports were flooded with moving stories of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The power of Miller’s story about war’s consequences for both veterans and civilians––of honor and sacrifice, of guilt, honesty, hope, and love––is as relevant today as when the play premiered in 1947.

All My Sons teaches us that as we struggle in the aftermath of war and conflict, compassion and forgiveness provide the only means by which we will heal.

Jere lee hodgin, direCtor

/ MONTANA REp audienCe reSourCe booklet / www.montanarep.org 2016 national tour / ALL MY SONS

Photo by terry J. Cyr

diReCtoR’s note

2016Montana Repnational tour

M i S S i o n

Montana Repertory Theatre tells the great stories of our world to enlighten, develop, and celebrate the human spirit in an ever-expanding community.

All My Sons dramatizes a 24-hour series of events by which Joe Keller, the owner of a small manufacturing business, is forced to accept his guilt for selling defective airplane engine parts to the U.S. Air Force during World War II and the subsequent effects this has on his family.

aCt one: The play takes place in August in the backyard of the Keller home somewhere “in the outskirts of an American town” (5). The play primarily follows Joe Keller, his wife, Kate, and their elder son, Chris. It can be inferred from the play and historical context that the town is no more than a few hours’ train ride from Columbus, Ohio. The play begins on Sunday morning with Joe reading the newspaper want ads. The first moments reveal that a small apple tree in the Kellers’ yard—planted as a memorial to their younger son, Larry, gone missing in the war—was blown over by the previous night’s storm. Due to the lack of a body, however, Kate is convinced that Larry is alive somewhere. Another early detail reveals that Larry’s high school sweetheart, Ann, the daughter of Joe’s ex-business partner, Steve Deever, is asleep upstairs on an unexpected visit from New York.

When Chris enters, he tells Joe that Kate has already seen the broken memorial and argues that after three years it is high time they told her that they believe Larry is dead. Joe retorts that unless he has proof, he’ll never convince her, at which point Chris reveals that Ann is in town because he plans to propose to her. While Joe does not deny Chris’s vie for support, he doesn’t offer congratulations either, warning that to marry Larry’s girl is to publicly pronounce his brother dead.

Later in the act, Kate, alone with Joe, wonders why Chris invited Ann to their house. She exclaims that they cannot get married, citing the tree breaking on the night of Ann’s return as a bad sign. As the act progresses, a conversation between Ann and the Kellers reveal that Ann’s father Steve is in prison in Columbus, having been pinned with the blame for shipping out cracked cylinder heads to the government three years prior to the beginning of the play. Joe, it seems, was acquitted because he was out of the shop with the flu and did not, therefore, make the decision to cover up the cracks in the cylinder heads. Joe is suspiciously quick to defend Steve when Chris and Ann condemn the man they consider to have murdered twenty-one pilots, possibly including Larry.

When Kate and Joe exit to prepare for a night out, Chris and Ann have a chance to confirm their feelings for one another and decide to get married. Joe interrupts them to tell Ann that her brother George is on the phone from Columbus and that he will be in town in a matter of hours. Kate and Joe question Chris about George’s motives for coming to see them straight after a visit with Steve in prison. What news will George bear when he arrives?

aCt tWo: In a conversation with Sue Bayliss, the Kellers’ neighbor, Ann discovers that many in the neighborhood still believe Joe is guilty. When George arrives, he announces that his sister is leaving with him and that there will be no wedding. He accuses Joe of placing the blame on Steve and pulling a fast one in court. Kate enters and tempers the flames. The tension subsides and George agrees to join them for dinner when, in a slip of the tongue, Kate remarks that Joe hasn’t been sick for fifteen years. George goes on the offensive again, claiming that Joe was not sick when he told Steve to cover the cracks in the cylinder heads, but stayed away from the factory in order to easily claim innocence. Later, in an impassioned speech, Kate exclaims that if Larry is dead, Joe killed him, leading Chris to finally realize his father’s probable guilt. Chris confronts Joe, who defends his decision to save his business and his family’s future by shipping out the cracked cylinder heads. It becomes clear that Joe is indeed guilty of telling Steve to cover the cracks and ship out the heads and then denying it in court.

aCt thRee: Slightly past midnight the next morning, Kate tries to convince Joe that if he admits his guilt and offers to go to prison, perhaps Chris will forgive him. Ann enters and tries convincing Kate that Larry is dead, and when Kate again denies it, Ann hands her a letter written by Larry just before he went missing. When Chris returns, he tells his parents that he’s leaving the business and moving to Cleveland. Joe tries to convince him that he wasn’t the only one to profit from the war and that “half the goddam country is gotta go if I go!” (82). Ann gives the letter to Chris who reads it aloud, revealing that when Larry heard about what Joe did, he resolved to commit suicide. At the conclusion of the letter, Joe admits, “… sure he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were” (83). He exits into the house and as Chris and Kate decide what to do next, a gunshot is heard from the cellar.

synopsis


Aside from his plays, Miller is perhaps most famous for his very public marriage to Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe, a relationship he chronicles in some detail in his most overtly autobiographical play, After the Fall (1964). The two were married on June 29, 1956, and divorced in 1961 shortly before the premier of the film adaptation of Miller’s novella The Misfits (1957), in which Monroe starred.

Miller’s later career was also incredibly prolific, producing film adaptations of his plays and novels, including Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich in 1984, and a highly successful version of The Crucible in 1996, starring Paul Scofield, Winona Ryder, and Miller’s son-in-law Daniel Day-Lewis. In 1987, Miller published his autobiography, Timebends: A Life, in which he perhaps best summarizes his own life and work:

And so the coyotes are out there earnestly trying to arrange their lives to make more coyotes possible, not knowing that it is my forest, of course. And I am in this room from which I can sometimes look out at dusk and see them warily moving through the barren winter trees, and I am, I suppose, doing what they are doing, making myself possible and those who come after me. At such moments I do not know whose land this is that I own, or whose bed I sleep in. In the darkness out there they see my light and pause, muzzles lifted, wondering who I am and what I am doing here in this cabin under my light. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth, the first truth, probably, is that we are all connected, watching one another. Even the trees (599).

Miller died in 2005 after battles with cancer, pneumonia, and heart disease at the age of 89. Montana Rep is proud to present its National Tour of All My Sons just after the centenary of Miller’s birth.

aRthuR MilleR (1915-2005)

Born in Manhattan to an Austrian immigrant and a New Yorker, Arthur Miller spent his childhood living on the Upper West Side in relative wealth until his father’s business collapsed in the stock market crash of 1929. Miller spent his teens and early twenties living

in Brooklyn, working odd jobs to help his family and pay his tuition at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1938.

Miller’s early professional playwriting career began and ended quickly with the Federal Theatre Project, an agency of Roosevelt’s controversial New Deal, which Congress shut down in 1939 due to suspicions of a Communist infiltration. 1940 saw the first Broadway production of a Miller play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, which won the Theatre Guild’s National Award, but was panned by the critics and closed after only four performances. At just 30 years old, Miller began writing All My Sons, what he considered his final attempt as a playwright. He decided that if the play did not succeed, he would abandon the form and focus solely on fiction and journalism. All My Sons opened on Broadway in January 1947 and ran for 328 performances.

Despite being “a very depressing play in a time of great optimism” (Rifkin), as Miller once said about All My Sons, The New York Times’ Brooks Atkinson wrote two Sunday pieces and a glowing review, helping the play gain traction and go on to win New York Drama Critics’ Circle and Tony Awards for best author.

In 1948, Miller wrote what is often cited as the most studied and important American play ever written. Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway in 1949, ran for 742 performances, won New York Drama Critics’ Circle and Tony Awards for best author, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Montana Rep produced the play for its 2002 National Tour). Riding the momentum of this success, Miller began researching the Salem witch trials of 1692 and wrote The Crucible (1953), a period piece that serves as an allegory of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) search for Communist sympathizers within American arts industries. Miller himself was called on to testify before HUAC in 1956, refused to name names, and was acquitted. Today, The Crucible is Miller’s most frequently produced work both nationally and internationally. All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and his 1955 tragedy chronicling the downfall of a Brooklyn Navy Yard dock worker, A View From the Bridge, comprise Miller’s next most frequently produced works.


Chairman Martin dies, Jr. of the house Committee investigating un-american activities, working on a reply to President roosevelt’s attack on the Committee, oct. 26, 1938.

Marilyn Monroe and arthur Miller in 1957.

playWRight / arthur Millerby Cohen ambrose for Montana repertory theatre ©2015

the ChaRaCteRsthe Caststage plays by arthur Miller


Joe kellerMike Boland*

kate kellerLaurie Dawn*

Chris kellerColton Swibold

ann deeverMeg Kiley Smith*

george deeverMason Wagner

dr. Jim baylissScoob Decker

Sue baylissCahilan Shine

Frank lubeySam Williamson

lydia lubeyElizabeth Bennett

bertRyan Luwe

* Member of actors’ equity association

Joe Keller is a charismatic family man and owner of a small plant that manufactured airplane engine parts for the rapid U.S. militarization leading up to and during World War II.

Kate Keller is Joe’s devoted wife. She believes their son, Larry, gone missing during the war, is still alive somewhere.

Chris Keller, Kate and Joe’s son and a war veteran, is slated to take over the family business, but not before he announces his intentions to marry Larry’s high school sweetheart, Ann Deever.

Ann Deever is the Keller’s former neighbor, Larry’s high school sweetheart, and daughter of Steve Deever, Joe’s ex-business partner, who went to jail for shipping out defective airplane engine parts to the government during the war.

George Deever, also a war veteran, is Ann’s older brother. He arrives at the Kellers’ after visiting his father in prison, determined to stop Ann and Chris from getting married.

Dr. Jim Bayliss lives beside the Kellers with his wife, Sue, in the Deever’s old house. He is a family doctor who wishes he could focus on medical research.

Sue Bayliss is Dr. Bayliss’s wife and a social climber intent on making her family’s status equal to that of the Kellers.

Frank Lubey is the Keller’s other neighbor and Chris and Larry’s childhood friend who stayed out of the war. He creates a horoscope for Larry, insisting that the day Larry went missing was his favorable day.

Lydia Lubey is Frank’s wife and George’s pre-war teenage love interest. Her youthful charm and energy make Sue Bayliss jealous.

Bert is a neighborhood boy whom Joe convinces to police the neighborhood and bring any offenders to be locked up in the “jail” in the Kellers’ cellar.

No Villain (1936)

They Too Arise (1937, based on No Villain)

Honors at Dawn (1938, based on They Too Arise)

The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on they too arise)

The Great Disobedience (1938)

Listen My Children (1939, with norman rosten)

The Golden Years (1940)

The Man Who Had All the Luck (1940)

The Half-Bridge (1943)

All My Sons (1947)

Death of a Salesman (1949)

An Enemy of the People (1950, based on henrik ibsen’s play An Enemy of the People)

The Crucible (1953)

A View from the Bridge (1955)

A Memory of Two Mondays (1955)

After the Fall (1964)

Incident at Vichy (1964)

The Price (1968)

The Reason Why (1970)

Fame (one-act, 1970)

The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972)

The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977)

The American Clock (1980)

Playing for Time (television play, 1980)

Elegy for a Lady (short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror)

Some Kind of Love Story (short play, 1982, second part of Two Way Mirror)

I Think About You a Great Deal (1986)

Playing for Time (stage version, 1985)

I Can’t Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)

Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!)

The Last Yankee (1991)

The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)

Broken Glass (1994)

Mr Peter’s Connections (1998)

Resurrection Blues (2002)

Finishing the Picture (2004)

aCtoRs’ equity assoCiation (aea), founded in 1913, represents more than 45,000 actors and stage managers in the united States. equity seeks to advance, promote, and foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of our society. equity negotiates wages and working conditions, providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. aea is a member of the aFl-Cio and is affiliated with Fia, an international organization of performing arts unions. the equity emblem is our mark of excellence. www.actorsequity.org


q: What is the first step you take when you prepare to direct a play?

Jh: I always start by identifying the major elements of the play. I begin with the most basic structural devices. What is the incident that begins the conflict of the play? What event occurs that acts as a turning point? And of course, what is the climax of the play? In All My Sons, the inciting incident is when Chris reveals to his father that he’s going to propose to Ann. That event sets forth all the motion of the play. The point at which the play turns in a direction from which there is no return is more obvious and that’s when [Ann’s] brother George arrives, having just visited their father in prison, with the intent to stop Chris and Ann’s marriage. Like many characters from the Greek tragedies, he comes in with a vengeance. Had he not come in, it would have been a different play, it might have worked out okay, and I think Miller was trying to write a tragedy that was an outgrowth of who we are today and not who we used to be. Joe’s flaw is that he thinks he can get away with his crime. George’s insistence on the truth being told, to right a wrong and avenge his father, is what ultimately leads Joe to the step that he takes at the climax of the play. He cannot live with his own guilt. He has been living through denial, but when he is no longer allowed the luxury of self-denial, he cannot live with the effacement that’s going to produce in him.

q: What is your concept for Montana Rep’s production of All My Sons?

Jh: The play is a boxing match. I think Miller adopted a real robust straightforwardness with this play. It is all set in Joe Keller’s backyard. There are no interior or private scenes. Everything is there for the whole community to witness, and so when I began talking with the scenic designer, I saw that the play is like a boxing match. I wanted there to be a “ring.” The characters have to get into the ring, so to speak. They spar with one another until George shows up and starts throwing blows. It was important that even in the front of the set, there would be a fence—it’s only suggested, but it’s there nevertheless. It’s containment—there’s no escape from this yard. Joe is a brawler. Even when Kate confronts Joe at the end of the play and tries to convince him to face his guilt, they go into the yard, into the empty ring, as it were, with no one else there, and she really takes him down to his knees. Then Chris comes in and reads the letter, which is the total knockout. There’s no recovery for Joe. He cannot get up.

q: What will you do in the first rehearsals?

Jh: Part of what I’ll do in the first days of rehearsal is to determine how the energies of the actors fit together. I’ll be keenly studying the actors and from that, I’ll determine how I want to rehearse the play. I’ll work out a rough rehearsal schedule beforehand based on how the play is structured, but that will be tempered by who the people are. The cast will not meet one another until the first read-through, so I’ll also be watching their reactions to one another. I also like to try to work out what each individual’s rhythm is and how that rhythm can coincide with the character’s rhythm, or what the character’s rhythm is going to be as a result of the actor’s rhythm. For example, Joe Keller is a blue-collar man who has risen above that level, but he’s a hands-on man. Therefore, his energy has to be big enough that he can be in control—how he reads a newspaper will even tell us a lot about his rhythm. Dr. Bayliss is restless, so I want Scoob [Decker] to be forward-moving and quick. I think George [Mason Wagner] has to have a very fast, flailing rhythm. There would be a considered rhythm—no wasted energy or movement for Chris [Colton Swibold]. Chris is grounded. I’m going to work with each actor on activities and their physicality to help them establish and bring out their character’s rhythm.

inside the diReCtoR’s notebook Jere hodgin on directing All My Sons


q: How did you begin the design process for All My Sons?

CM: I have done other plays in this same period, so I started throwing things into a file for women’s fashion—anything I saw that captured what I needed to know. I put together a similar file for men, based mostly on advertisements from the period. [Director] Jere [Hodgin] and I looked at all of these files together and bounced ideas off of one another before making any firm decisions.

q: What were your first reactions to the script?

CM: The first time I read the script, I was distressed by how trapped [the characters] were so I tried to convey some of that entrapment through my costuming choices. For example, in my design for Kate [Keller’s] housedress, the neckline is very high. She is trapped in that dress. It’s not a show that a costume designer can ‘play’ with a whole lot. You’re trying to present real people who lead fairly ordinary lives. There are no overly flamboyant characters—they’re ordinary folks in an extraordinary situation.

q: What is it like to design for a play of this period?

CM: In terms of the evolution of fashion, a huge amount of change occurred between 1945 and 1950. Women’s clothing changed from the very military look of the war years with broad shoulders, skirts that didn’t use much fabric—utility kinds of clothing—but then in 1947, Christian Dior came out with the New Look, which was a very feminine look with a full skirt, and in some cases a corseted bodice—really fitted and curvy compared to the severe look of the war. [All My Sons is] kind of right in between those, but we can begin to see the loosening of silhouettes. I wanted to find that right mix between the severity of the war and a more feminine attitude for the women. “Fashion is evolution, not revolution,” as the old adage goes, except when some major catastrophe like war intervenes, so here we are in 1947 trying to pick up the pieces from almost a decade earlier, which makes this a very exciting but subtle period to design for.

oRdinaRy folks in an extRaoRdinaRy situation Chris Milodragovich on designing costumes for All My Sons

director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jere Lee Hodgin

Scenic designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Fink

Costume designer . . . .Christine L. Milodragovich

lighting designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Monsos

Sound designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zach Hamersley

assistant director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joel Shura

Production dramaturg. . . . . . . . . . .Cohen Ambrose

design and pRoduCtion

Although the rehearsal process did not begin until just over a month before the production opened in late January 2016, this production of All My Sons has been over a year in the making. At the time this resource booklet was going to press, rehearsals had not yet begun, but the play was cast and the design process was well under way. What we have therefore decided to include here are some elements of the production concept, and scenic and costume designs with insights from the director and designers on their processes.

a pattern used as inspiration for Chris Milodragovich’s costume design for one of anne deever’s dresses.


q: What were your first reactions to the script?

Mf: When I first read the play I remember really identifying with Chris Keller’s outlook. I myself am terribly idealistic and being so tends to strongly define my perspective at times. Issues can become so polarized that everything appears in pure black or white. I think there’s a sort of starkness to that perspective that elevates the play to that idealistic realm. It creates the possibility to make a show that focuses more on who we want to become rather than creating a portrait of who we were.

q: What kind of initial research did you do to get inspiration for your design?

Mf: For this production, one of the first images I started with was this watercolor by Wyoming artist Dean Mitchell. In the back you can see other houses and sort of get this sense of encroaching suburbia. The color is subdued and the house is a little off-kilter. I’m reminded of artists like Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.

I like the verticality of the farmhouse—this kind of big, monolithic structure out there standing in opposition to the ground. In my mind the house takes on the personality of Joe [Keller].

q: What kind of architecture did you research for the Kellers’ house?

Mf: I really wanted to find that iconic image of American architecture. What I ended up with is kind of an amalgamation of American Foursquare and Gothic Revival. We’d know which for sure if we actually saw the roof, but I really like that we don’t. These houses now—compared to Modern Architecture—are bastions of American character and charm. What’s interesting though is that, at the time, they were being commercially distributed—you could buy houses in the Sears catalog! Something about that resonates with what Miller might be saying here about Modernism—Joe Keller’s factory, the industrial, the machine of war.

q: What other aesthetic elements did you want to incorporate into your design?

Mf: When I started sketching I was really attracted to the fence. The fence is the thing that we see all the neighbors through and the thing that Joe puts up both to keep others out and to hold his family in. The downstage portion is angled the way it is to make the entire scene feel a bit off-kilter and exciting. I love the straight cut line—an obvious line—like our gaze is slicing their world open. My design makes use of realism to create a sense of texture and weight but it departs from the convention at its edges. It’s ethereal but tangible. With the sky I wanted to create a sense of depth, continuing thought, legacy, or horizon. I also liked the idea of these characters entering the stage in a really two-dimensional way. It’s somehow alarming in its efficient plan for movement with all these strong and straight lines of attack.

sliCing the kelleRs’ WoRld open Mike Fink on designing the set for All My Sons

above: Midwest Mansion, dean Mitchell, watercolor 10”x7½”, 2010.

below: the ¼” scale model of Mike Fink’s scenic design.

Leading up to and during the war, large manufacturing corporations sub-contracted thousands of small, often family-run, machine shops and plants around the country to build aircraft parts en masse. Among them was the then decade-old manufacturing conglomerate Curtiss-Wright Corporation, founded in Buffalo, NY. By the end of the war, Curtiss-Wright was the country’s largest aircraft manufacturer. The Wright Aeronautical Corporation (engines), the Curtiss-Wright Airplane Division (airframes), and the Propeller Division made up the company’s product line. During the war, officials at an engine plant in Lockland, Ohio, were demanding an extremely high rate of output, resulting in many engine parts that did not meet Army Air Forces inspections standards. Nevertheless, in many instances, defective parts were approved and a scandal arose leading to an April 26, 1944, headline in the Milwaukee Journal that read, “Three Air Officers ‘Guilty of Neglect’, Ordered Dismissed” (33). The case made it all the way to a hearing before the Truman Committee. Although Arthur Miller never verified that the Curtiss-Wright scandal was the inspiration for All My Sons, it seems probable, and in fact the “P-40”—the plane Joe Keller insists his son Larry never flew so he could therefore not have been killed by one of his plant’s defective cylinder heads—was more formally known as the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk.


America’s forgotten heroes of World War Two...didn’t wear uniforms, at least not at first. They wore business suits, dungarees and flannel shirts, spectacles and Stetsons... - Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge

Prior to the Second World War, the American armaments industry was not even close to being geared up to wartime levels. Germany was militarizing at a frenzied pace, along with Japan and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. By the mid 1930s, the U.S. did not even rank among the top fifteen most militarized nations in the world. To draw a striking comparison, the U.S. Army was smaller than that of Romania. Compared to 9,000 military aircraft being built in Germany annually by 1939, the U.S. was producing only ten percent that volume. Needless to say, only shortly before it began, the American military establishment was not up to the challenges that World War II would soon present.

On September 1, 1939, Hitler unleashed his Blitzkrieg. Once the Nazi armies made their way into France, Franklin Delano Roosevelt began setting aside funds to buy munitions and ramp up U.S. wartime industry standards. In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend Lease Act, which provided France, the U.K., the Republic of China, and the U.S.S.R. with warships, planes, and other weaponry. The materiel was free of charge, but in return, the Allies gave America leases on strategic territories for Army and Naval bases. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany and Italy’s declarations of war on the U.S. on the 11th, the aircraft industry received its biggest boost, and the United States’ 44th busiest industry before the war was, within the year, number one.

histoRiCal Context: gearing uP to Fight wwii

left: P-39s and P-63s in a wheatfield, new york, assembly plant in the 1940s.

above: united States army air Force Curtiss P-40 warhawk


It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time—the heart and spirit of the average man. Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man

Just seventeen days after the opening of Death of a Salesman on Broadway, the New York Times published an article in which Miller argued that the heroes and heroines of the great tragedies of the ancient Greek playwrights were, not unlike all of us, susceptible to the most overwhelming threat to any human: the threat of being stripped of our sense of identity. Miller borrowed the structure of his most successful and best-known plays from the great Greek tragedies. “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us,” Miller wrote, “when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing—his sense of human dignity” (Miller 4). However, Miller argues in his essays and in his plays that it is only the true hero or heroine that gives in to the temptation to act against what he calls the “wound of indignity,” and fight against that which degrades them, no matter how unethical that fight may be. The fear we all hold, no matter how rich or poor, is the fear of displacement, the fear of being withheld from performing the duties we believe ourselves to have been brought into this world to offer. The common man, Miller maintains, knows this fear better than any king, queen, dictator, or politician.

As a playwright, Miller’s goal was to make the case that not only are kings and queens good candidates for tragic heroism, but so too could the common man (the travelling salesman, the dock worker, the farmer, the shop owner) experience the epic, tragic downfall of any great ruler. Miller asserts: “I believe that the common man is as apt a subject

for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (3). Miller not only argues that the common man can and should be the subject of tragedies of Greek proportions, but he proves it in his best plays. Like Oedipus, Joe Keller’s tragic spiral leads to a climax in which he finally accepts the answer of his fate and admits that his actions affected not only his family, but “all my sons,” and he pays the ultimate price.

Contrary to our initial instincts, Miller believed that tragic storytelling was not meant to sadden, but rather to enliven and reinvigorate the human spirit with a compassion for human flaws. He challenges traditional assumptions and argues that “tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinion of the human animal” (6). If we are so determined to become our whole selves in personality and through our contributions to the world, and our need to realize our humanity is so “indestructible,” as Miller asserts, this fact of our species is something to be treated with admiration, not regret. Miller’s greatest characters, all common women and men, are his badges of hope and honor dedicated to humankind.

theatRiCal Context: arthur Miller and the CoMMon Man

left: louis bouwmeester as oedipus in a dutch production of Oedipus the King c. 1896. image courtesy of albert greiner Sr. and Jr.

above: Miller in 1966. image courtesy of the dutch national archives, and Spaarnestad Photo.

Arthur Miller is known for posing large social and moral questions in his plays by forcing his heroes to make great ethical decisions. In Death of a Salesman he asks whether society values the individual as a human or simply as a means of efficient production, forcing his hero to decide between his life and his identity as a traveling salesman. In A View from the Bridge, he asks what it takes for a man to maintain his image within the writs of his social code, forcing his hero to decide between family allegiance and his reputation in the community. Similarly, in The Crucible, he forces his hero into a decision between saving his own life and preserving his name. In All My Sons, Joe Keller’s moral dilemma is whether to pledge primary allegiance to his family or to his community, his country, and humankind. Ultimately, Keller considers this question before the play begins and finalizes his answer by the play’s end.

By staying home and pretending to be sick, thereby letting his partner Steve Deever ship out fatally defective engine cylinder heads to the Air Force, Keller puts his family’s security over the safety of hundreds of American pilots. In his confession to Chris in Act Two, Keller puts it plainly: “You lay forty years into a business and they knock you out in five minutes, what could I do?” (69). Despite Keller’s persistent claim to his son that he did it for him, Chris’s experience as a unit commander in the war seems to have ingrained in him a greater sense of fidelity to larger clan values and he rebukes his father for his devotion to private, family loyalties. “You can be better,” Chris reproaches his parents, “Once and for all you can know that the whole earth comes through those fences; there’s a universe out there and you’re responsible to it” (84).

The moral question of the tragic hero in All My Sons is not, however, only a matter of Keller’s choice to act for his family. Miller leaves the reader and the audience with many moral questions to consider at the end of the play, including whether Keller is in fact the tragic victim because he is betrayed by a social code that, until now, had respected his family allegiances. Until the incident, Keller had been widely admired for his ability to capitalize on the business opportunities presented by the war effort. Is Chris right? Did Keller betray the greater good for the benefit of the family, or is he a victim betrayed by the changing values of his world? In any case, by forcing Keller between multifaceted questions of right and wrong, Miller asks his audiences the same: with whom do your allegiances lie?

BIBLIOGRApHy

Herman, Arthur. Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II. Random House: New York, 2012.

Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. Penguin Classics: New York, 2000.

Miller, Arthur. “Tragedy and the Common Man.” The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller. Da Capo Press: New York, 1996.

Miller, Arthur. Timebends: A Life. Bloomsbury: London, 2012.

Rifkin, Ron. “Arthur Miller.” BOMB Magazine. n.p. Fall 1994. Web.

“Three Air Officers ‘Guilty of Neglect’, Ordered Dismissed.” The Milwaukee Journal. 26 April 1944: 33.

FURTHER READING

Baime, A.J. The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War. Mariner Books: New York, 2015.

Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller. Harvard University Press: Boston, 2010.

Bloom, Harold, Ed. Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Infobase Publishing: New York, 1987.

Miller, Arthur. The Penguin Arthur Miller: Collected Plays (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Penguin Classics: New York, 2015.

kelleR’s MoRal dileMMa: the FaMily vS. the ColleCtive



NOTES:

montana rep 2016...miller’s later career was also incredibly prolific, producing film adaptations...

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