all my sons Contexts Flashcards
Tragic protagonist
A man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness / wickedness but because of some mistake
Perepeteia
A change or reversal in fortune
Anagnorisis
A revelation /recognition/discovery about fate, destiny, and the will of the gods.
Catharsis
Where the audience undergo a purification of emotions through a course of pity and fear and learn something of the human condition or world around them
Hubris
Excessive pride or self confidence
Hamartia
Fatal flaw /mistake
Unity of action
No sub plots
Unity of place
No set change
Unity of time
Takes place in 24 hours
World war 2 as source material for all my sons
- miller read an article in the newspaper which described a young woman’s decision to inform on her father for selling faulty parts to the military
- 407,000 US WW2 casualties
- survivor’s guilt develops in those who have survived life-threatening situations e.g. war (guilt when others have not survived but they have, that they could’ve done more to help others survive, or that people died saving them)
Miller’s ‘Tragedy and the common man’ essay
” To bring a man into the direct path of the consequences he has wrought”
“the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity”
“i believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”
Modern tragedy and how it relates to all my sons
“kelley’s punishment is thought to come from society rather than from the gods, or other divine or supernatural influence” -Thind
“the theme of social responsibility lies at the heart of the play” -Thind
“contrary to shakespearean tragedies in which the tragic hero is of a high-born status…joe is representative of the whole population like ‘the average joe’” -Thind
Ibsen’s influence on AMS
The wild duck - ekdal takes the blame for his friend old werle for felling state-owned trees and then werle prospers, whilst his son tries to uncover the truth
Ghosts- where a character returns to reveal the truth
The Great Depression + autobiographical detail
more than any other event, miller’s life was defined by the wall st. crash, where his family had to move away into a broken-down neighbourhood after the collapse of his father’s prosperous clothing company
The consumerist boom of the 1950s following the war
17 million new jobs created, industrial productivity increased by 96%
