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abstract: Although various motivations have been analyzed for Joe Keller's suicide in All My Sons, this essay argues for a new motivation by reexamining Joe's psychology, dialogic consistency, symbolism in the play, suicides in other Miller plays, and Miller's Chekhovian technique. Joe's motivation for suicide is to preserve his manufacturing business and pass it to Chris. To live, once Joe's secret is exposed, would endanger his mission. In his final practical, psychological, and philosophical battle with Chris, Joe wins, that is, achieves his goal, in the only way he knows how. If all elements of the play and their cohesiveness are considered, All My Sons then does not have a flawed ending, puzzling previous interpreters, but is a well-crafted, coherent work of art.
keywords: All My Sons, Joe Keller, Arthur Miller, Joe Keller's suicide
Perhaps the most enduring uncertainty concerning an understanding of All My Sons has been in identifying the motivation for Joe Keller's suicide at the end of the play. Although an extensive but not exhaustive survey of the scholarship reveals all the seemingly possible different positions taken in interpretation, I will argue that still another one, not yet expressed, should be considered: Joe's determination to preserve his business success and pass it intact to Chris, his only surviving son and heir. For the absence of precise clarity in this matter some scholars blame Miller's lack of sureness in his art or his immaturity as a playwright at the time he composed the play. Terry Otten writes that "Miller reaches for a moral complexity and tragic resolution in All My Sons that he never fully achieves, largely because of the limitation of the recognition scene and the underdeveloped motivation for Joe's suicide" that "the suicide's motivation and ultimate meaning . . . remains nebulous rather than intentionally ambiguous" (17, 40). Pamela Loos calls the play's resolution too simple because it was written early in Miller's career (31). Robert Scanlan's view is that the play is "rickety" in craft (181). Leonard Moss argues that "Miller mishandles the resolution. Joe Keller's inexplicable decision to commit suicide is the most obvious sign of this mishandling" (41). Edward Murray challenges Miller's belief "that every step in All My Sons was carefully calculated" and states that "Miller,...