All My Sons (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Adam, Julie. Versions of Heroism in Modern American Drama: Redefinitions by Miller, Williams, O’Neill and Anderson, St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

  Examining and comparing the protagonists of major American playwrights who attempted to write tragedy, Adam finds that their heroism can fit into distinct categories: idealism, martyrdom, self-reflection, and survival.

• Gross, Barry. “All My Sons and the Larger Context,” Modern Drama, Vol. 18, 1975, pp. 15-27.

  Gross examines Joe Keller and his son Chris in light of Miller’s aim to create a play functioning as “legislation,” exhibiting a strong social purpose, and examines the generation gap between the father and son.

• Hayman, Ronald. Arthur Miller, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1972.

  In this brief monograph, Hayman offers a good critical introduction to Miller’s earliest plays. Hayman, concludes that Miller’s principal concern is with cause and effect.

• Hogan, Robert. Arthur Miller, University of Minnesota Press, 1964.

  A brief work in the pamphlet series on American writers, Hogan’s study is a critical overview of Miller’s early works up to and including After the Fall. It notes the similarity of structure between All My Sons and Oedipus Rex.

• Miller, Arthur. Timebends: A Life, Grove Press, 1987.

  Miller’s autobiography offers insights to all his work written into the 1980s. He offers personal reflections on his plays.

• Moss, Leonard. Arthur Miller, Twayne Publishers, 1967.

  Moss examines Miller’s “technical resources,” his “dialogue styles, narrative conventions, symbolic devices, and structural principles.”

• Moss, Leonard. “Arthur Miller and the Common Man’s Language,” Modern Drama, 7 (1964), pp. 52-9.

  Moss’s article explores Miller’s tendency to use ordinary speech for the expression of ethical abstractions. It uses All My Sons to illustrate some of its points.

• Wells, Arvin R. “The Living and the Dead in All My Sons,” Modern Drama, Vol. 7, 1964, pp. 46-51.

  This article argues that All My Sons and other Miller plays have a “density of texture” that is much greater than that of a “typical social thesis play.”