How Miller Presents Joe Keller as a Tragic Hero in All My Sons Essay

How Miller Presents Joe Keller as a Tragic Hero in All My Sons Joe Keller is a man who loves and values his family very much. Like most Americans he has given everything so he can have the big house, the fancy car and the bulging wallet. He has given everything so he can have the American Dream. Unfortunately for Keller, everything isn't as perfect as it seems. "All My Sons" is a very tragic play. It shows how a man can sacrifice everything including the honour of his name to make his family prosperous. This struggle for wealth and material goods involves Keller doing an awful crime because he wants his family to be wealthy. This is the cause of Keller's downfall. In "All My Sons" Miller examines the morality of a man who places his narrow responsibility to his immediate family above his wider responsibility to the men who rely on the integrity of his work. "All My Sons" shows Keller placing his family in front of society. At the end of "All My Sons" Keller disappears offstage and shoots himself. This is a very tragic thing to happen because all Keller wanted was a happy family. When Chris finds out that Keller, his father, had allowed faulty cylinder heads to be sent out of his factory, Keller proves to the audience that he wanted good to come from it by saying "what the hell did I work for? That's only for you, Chris, the whole shootin' match is for you" on page 102 and "For you, a business for you!" on page 158. This tells the audience that Keller was a very hard worker and that all the hard work he did was for his family. After hearing this Keller doesn't sound like a murderer or a killer at all. He sounds like a very loving and devoted father and husband who may have done something wrong but ... ...admires him for being able to wriggle his way out of a prison sentence. They admire him for how clever he was to lie and pin the blame on someone else. I think this is a very corrupt society and I think that is what Miller was trying to portray to the audience in "All My Sons". Miller wanted to get across to the audiences his views on American society. I think Miller writes about another broader tragedy in the play besides Keller's tragedy. This tragedy is the society we live in today and how nobody looks out for each other. It is all about the survival of the fittest nowadays. This is what Chris tries to stand up against throughout the play. Keller's tragedy in "All My Sons" is that he works so hard for the American Dream and at the end of the play he shoots himself. By doing this he is giving up everything he has worked so hard for over his life.