Arthur Miller, All My Sons

Michael J. Meyer (DePaul University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1947

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play
Tragedy

Resources

All My Sons opened on Broadway in 1947 and ran for 328 performances, receiving the Tony Awards for Best Play and for Best Director of a Play (Elia Kazan) the same year. According to author Arthur Miller, it was his final attempt at attaining success as a dramatist, and he vowed to find some other kind of work if this drama failed. Based on a real-life occurrence in Ohio where a woman informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the military, the play also evidences the influence of Scandinavian playwright Henrik Ibsen, whose play The Wild Duck also examined the dilemma of two partners in business where one individual is forced to take moral responsibility and one character's idealism is the central problem …

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2506 words

Citation: Meyer, Michael J.. "All My Sons". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 February 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6772, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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