Sunday, November 30, 2008

All My Sons

Joe Keller decides that family outweighs society. "I'm in business; a hundred and twenty cracked, you're out of business; you got a process, the process don't work you're out of business; you don't know how to operate, your stuff is no good; they close you up, they tear up your contracts, what the hell's it to them?... Chris, I did it for you" (69-70). This shows that Joe wanted to keep the business running in order to support his family, despite the defective product. However, Chris has a different viewpoint. "I was dying every day and you were killing my boys and you did it for me... Don't you have a country?" (70). This shows how Chris values society as a whole more than his father's action to keep income flowing.

I believe that working for society is what is more important in this context. Joe should have just bit the bullet and close down his business. In the end, either way he would have lost his business, but in the route he chose, he hurt everyone involved.

4 comments:

Samantha said...

Kevin I completely agree! If Joe would have just sacrificed a small portion of his buisness his family would not have been ripped apart,and his colleague would not have been framed for Joe's mistake.

Ngoc/Jimmy said...

What Joe did could have been debatable. However, his dream was like any regular "American Dream." He wanted a good family and a good living. He was able to make this, or at least he thought he did by sacrificing society, however he had sacrificed his own family as well as society. He lied in court and caused his son Larry to kill himself. As for Chris, he believes the same that his dad was wrong since his dad not only killed off his own son, but also 21 pilots.

Ngoc/Jimmy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quinn J said...

Kevin, you are completely wrong. I hate to say it, but I disagree. Family is the root of society, it is what gives society meaning and value, and by not protecting it. You don't protect society. So by putting the community over your family, the roots of society get slowly torn out of the ground. What Joe Keller did was justified, had he not done that, it would have justified leaving your family. It would have justified destroying the moral values that families present that teather our society together. Kevin is wrong.