All My Sons - Essay 3

Courtney Krus
4th hour AP Lit
Throughout the play All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Kate Keller hopes that time will stand still for everyone so that her family’s past won’t become publicized, and realizes that while she may be stuck in time everyone else is moving on. She also denies the fact that her son, Larry, has died and that her husband is responsible for the death of 21 solders so that her family will survive. Kate does those things so she can act like she’s living a “normal” life while trying to hide the 21 dead solders true killer. Kate has been doing this ever since her husband’s company had a mishap ending in his partner/Ann’s father’s arrest. Through Kate, Miller suggests that no one can live a lie forever.
Kate wants everyone to act as if time has stood still for the past three and a half years, ever since her son went missing. She won’t accept the fact that her son Larry is dead. Arthur Miller placed a remembrance tree “at the heart not only of the stage but of the play” to show that the death of Larry is causing conflict in the Keller family (Bigsby ix). When the tree blows down in the storm Kate states that “it was too soon to plant a tree for him” because in having a commemorative tree her son’s death is on display and she isn’t willing to publicly accept that he is gone (Miller 20).   “Kate Keller refuses to acknowledge his death… because to do so would be to accept a connection between her husband’s action and her own loss” making Chris lose respect for both of his parents (Bigsby viii). Throughout the entire play Kate tries to make everyone else believe that Larry is not dead and that nothing went wrong in her husband’s company. No matter how much Kate tries to get everyone to “act like he’s coming back” and deny that there is a possibility that he is dead (Miller 22).
As Kate tries to live in the past everyone keeps moving forward with life and trying to drag Kate along with them. Chris keeps trying to pull her into the present so...