Answer to Blog Question Q2 AMS

The choice of weather to benefit your family or society is an interesting one, to say the least. This choice is shown through many different people in the play. Characters in Arthur Miller's play, "All My Sons", decide what is more important based on their own selfish impulses. The story is based around Joe Keller, who operated a factory that made airplane parts for the army in WWII. After 21 cracked cylinder heads made by his factory caused the death of 21 American pilots, him and his coworker were put on trial. Joe was supposedly innocent of all charges, but his coworker was put in jail. This case builds suspense throughout the story, until the son of the coworker comes to get Joe to confess, and Kate misspeaks, giving a clue as to why Joe is guilty. Chris gets angry at his father and is interrogating him until Joe cracks and erupts, "Because you know I don't belong there. Because you know! Who worked for nothin' in that war? When they work for nothin', I'll work for nothin'. Did they ship a gun or a truck outa Detroit before they got their price? Is that clean? It's dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it's nickels and dimes, what's clean? Half the Goddamn country is gotta go if I go! That's why you can't tell me" (82). Joe made the decision to send the bad parts out because he was obsessed with giving Chris a good life and keeping his business alive. He might have known it was morally wrong when he did it, but over the years, he slowly convinced himself otherwise because if he lost the respect of Chris then he would have no reason to live. Kate makes it hard on her fellow family members when she refuses to believe that Larry has passed away after being reported missing in action over three years ago. She constantly retorts at them whenever they suggest that he may have passed on, and is immensely stubborn in her views like when she says, "Because certain things have to be, and certain things can never be. Like the sun has to rise, it has to be. That's why there's God. Otherwise anything could happen. But there's God, so certain things can never happen. I would know, Annie- just like I knew the day he went in to that terrible battle. Did he write me? Was it in the papers? No, but that morning I couldn't raise my head off the pillow. Ask Joe. Suddenly, I knew! I knew! And he was nearly killed that day. Ann, you know I'm right!" (28). Kate's reasoning that Larry is alive because she feels it and God wouldn't have it any other way is just a stubborn excuse not to face the truth. She is selfishly keeping to her own world instead of giving in to reality and allowing Chris and Joe some peace of mind. The actions of Joe and Kate show that they are acting on their own selfish desires to make choices in life.

I think that it is appropriate to put the needs of your family before the needs of society only when you are not directly harming society by doing so. Joe Keller does not share my thinking because he effectively causes the deaths of 21 pilots just to keep the respect of his son and stay away from jail. As a human being that is part of society, you have to take responsibility for your actions even if that means that you take some punishment in the process. Just because you might of had a stroke of bad luck like Joe Keller does not give you the right to pass that on to society, which in Keller's case, caused many deaths. The classic conundrum of stealing bread to feed your hungry family is an interesting match to my view. I would steal the bread only because it does not do a great amount of harm to society and it saves active participants in that society, my family. Stealing bread from another hungry family is a different story, because you would be doing harm to them if you stole it.