Joe and Kate Keller had two sons, Chris and Larry.

Keller owned a manufacturing plant

with Steve Deever, and their families were close. Steve's daughter Ann was Larry's beau,
and George was their friend. When the war came, both Keller boys and George were
drafted.

During the war, Keller's and Deever's manufacturing plant had a very profitable contract
with the U.S. Army, supplying airplane parts. One morning, a shipment of defective parts
came in. Under pressure from the army to keep up the output, Steve Deever called Keller,
who had not yet come into work that morning, to ask what he should do. Keller told
Steve to weld the cracks in the airplane parts and ship them out. Steve was nervous about
doing this alone, but Keller said that he had the flu and could not go into work. Steve
shipped out the defective but possibly safe parts on his own.

Later, it was discovered that the defective parts caused twenty-one planes to crash and
their pilots to die. Steve and Keller were arrested and convicted, but Keller managed to
win an appeal and get his conviction overturned. He claimed that Steve did not call him
and that he was completely unaware of the shipment. Keller went home free, while Steve
remained in jail, shunned by his family.

Meanwhile, overseas, Larry received word about the first conviction. Racked with shame
and grief, he wrote a letter to Ann telling her that she must not wait for him. Larry then
went out to fly a mission, during which he broke out of formation and crashed his plane,
killing himself. Larry was reported missing.

Three years later, the action of the play begins. Chris has invited Ann to the Keller house
because he intends to propose to her--they have renewed their contact in the last few
years while she has been living in New York. They must be careful, however, since
Mother insists that Larry is still alive somewhere. Her belief is reinforced by the fact that
Larry's memorial tree blew down in a storm that morning, which she sees as a positive
sign. Her superstition has also led her to ask the neighbor to make a horoscope for Larry
in order to determine whether the day he disappeared was an astrologically favorable day.
Everyone else has accepted that Larry is not coming home, and Chris and Keller argue
that Mother should learn to forget her other son. Mother demands that Keller in particular
should believe that Larry is alive, because if he is not, then their son's blood is on Keller's
hands.

Ann's brother George arrives to stop the wedding. He had gone to visit Steve in jail to tell
him that his daughter was getting married, and then he left newly convinced that his
father was innocent. He accuses Keller, who disarms George by being friendly and
confident. George is reassured until Mother accidentally says that Keller has not been
sick in fifteen years. Keller tries to cover her slip of the tongue by adding the exception of
his flu during the war, but it is now too late. George is again convinced of Keller's guilt,
but Chris tells him to leave the house.
Chris's confidence in his father's innocence is shaken, however, and in a confrontation
with his parents, he is told by Mother that he must believe that Larry is alive. If Larry is
dead, Mother claims, then it means that Keller killed him by shipping out those defective
parts. Chris shouts angrily at his father, accusing him of being inhuman and a murderer,
and he wonders aloud what he must do in response to this unpleasant new information
about his family history.

Chris is disillusioned and devastated, and he runs off to be angry at his father in privacy.
Mother tells Keller that he ought to volunteer to go to jail--if Chris wants him to. She also
talks to Ann and continues insisting that Larry is alive. Ann is forced to show Mother the
letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. The
note basically confirms Mother's belief that if Larry is dead, then Keller is responsible--
not because Larry's plane had the defective parts, but because Larry killed himself in
response to the family responsibility and shame due to the defective parts.

Mother begs Ann not to show the letter to her husband and son, but Ann does not
comply. Chris returns and says that he is not going to send his father to jail, because that
would accomplish nothing and his family practicality has finally overcome his idealism.
He also says that he is going to leave and that Ann will not be going with him, because he
fears that she will forever wordlessly ask him to turn his father in to the authorities.

Keller enters, and Mother is unable to prevent Chris from reading Larry's letter aloud.
Keller now finally understands that in the eyes of Larry and in a symbolic moral sense,
all the dead pilots were his sons. He says that he is going into the house to get a jacket,
and then he will drive to the jail and turn himself in. But a moment later, a gunshot is
heard--Keller has killed himself.

All My Sons Essays and Related Content

Oedipus Rex Summary Report

Laius and Jocasta were King and Queen of the Great City of Thebes. After they bore a
child they took him to an oracle to see what was to become of him. But the oracle said,
“You will slay your father and marry your mother.” Fearing the oracle, Laius and Jocasta
delivered Oedipus, their infant son, to a servant, with orders that he be killed. The servant
took the baby into the wilderness, but could not bring himself to carry out the command.
Instead, he turned the child over to a Corinthian herdsman, who in turn passed the little
boy on to Polybus, King of Corinth, who adopted him as his own son. Oedipus was thus
raised to believe that he was the natural son of Polybus. Pride being his downfall and fate
nipping at his heel Oedipus was oblivious to the irony that surrounded himself in
Sophocles play Oedipus Rex .

Oedipus's life began to unravel the day he overheard an oracle repeat to him the
unthinkable prophecy that he would someday kill his father and marry his mother.
Supposing that Polybus was his real father, Oedipus determined to leave Corinth so as
not to remain anywhere near Polybus, left Corinth and traveled to Thebes. In his travels,
Oedipus came to a place where three roads meet. There he became caught up in a violent
argument with a band of travelers. He managed to kill all but one of his attackers, but
remained oblivious to the tragic irony of this triumph. Among the men he had slain was
Laius, his true father.

Later, the prophecies completed their awful and ironic cycle of fulfillment when Oedipus
undertook a mission to save Thebes, [still acknowledged as his native city] from some
female monster called the Sphinx. Of all the unlucky heroes to make the attempt, Oedipus
alone was able to answer the riddle that was put in front of many mockingly along the
Theban roadside by the winged lion-woman. "What goes first on four legs, then on two,
and then on three?" The Sphinx had ravenously devoured all those brave and foolhardy
souls who gave her wrong answers, but Oedipus, with the simple answer, "Man," gained
the power to finally destroy her. The grateful people of the city quickly claimed him as
King, and in time, he met, fell in love with, and married his own mother, Jocasta.

The irony here is that Oedipus has run away from the father he knows and has run into
his true father and has killed him as the oracle said he would do. Now Oedipus has gained
access to the city by solving a riddle, which in turn has put him in his mother’s arms. Of
course Jocasta had no idea that her new young husband was the son she had sent off to be
killed as an infant, nor did Oedipus realize that the dreaded prophecy had now at last
been fulfilled.

In Thebes, a dreadful plague had struck. The citizens assembled to beg King Oedipus to
stop the disease, and Oedipus reassured them that Creon, Jocasta's brother, had gone to
Delphi to ask the great Apollo how the plague might be ended. Little does Oedipus know
he will be in an investigation, looking for himself and the truth, Although the truth he
seeks know will be the truth he cannot see later.

When Creon finally returned, he brought startling news that Apollo had declared that the
plague had come upon the city because the very man who had murdered King Laius years
before was now living in Thebes. Apollo further swore that the plague would endure until
the murderer was exposed and exiled from the city. Oedipus, totally unaware that he
himself was the one who had struck down Laius, vowed to discover the identity of the
murderer at all costs.

Oedipus's first step was to call in Teiresias, a blind soothsayer of renowned wisdom.
When the King questioned Teiresias as to the identity of Laius' murderer, the prophet first
claimed that he did know the man's name, but then hesitated, he did not want to hurt
himself or Oedipus. Still Oedipus pressed on, and Teiresias finally relented. "You are the
slayer whom you seek," he sadly told Oedipus. Oedipus, furious at the suggestion of his
guilt, yelled and screamed at the prophet, who kept on by insisting that Oedipus was yet
blind to the truth and would soon learn of his guilt. Oedipus angrily dismissed the
sightless old man, accusing him of conspiring with Jocasta's brother, Creon, to overthrow
him, and take away his throne.

Afterwards, Jocasta unfolded to Oedipus the complete circumstances about the earlier
prophecy, but maintained that it could not have come to pass. Laius had not been killed
by his son, but by a band of robbers "at a place where three roads meet."

When Oedipus heard this he was stunned, quietly he told Jocasta how he himself had
once killed a man at such a place. For the first time, both mother and son began to suspect
that the words of Teiresias might be true. Oedipus talked and acted like Jocasta’s son and
was comforted by her as if she was his mother as they talked and tried to make sense of
the investigation.

Oedipus slowly put the pieces of his life together as each chapter unfolded. But their
suspicions were soon forgotten. However, when a messenger arrived from Corinth with
the news that Polybus had died. Oedipus and Jocasta were in a strange state of joy. This
meant that the whole prophecy was false, since Oedipus had not killed his own father,
there was no reason to believe the oracle's belief that he had also slain Jocasta's first
husband.

When the king and queen explained their expressions of joy and relief to the messenger,
this man told them news that they didn‘t want to hear. "Oh, you did not know?" he told
them. "Polybus was not your natural father, you were adopted. It was said that a Theban
herdsman found you as a baby on a hillside. He gave you to me, and I presented you to
the childless King Polybus, who adopted you. "

Even though Joscasta wanted Oedipus to stop he would not. Oedipus had to much pride
to stop the investigation, so he persues it to the end and to his end.

Oedipus was horrified by this account, and immediately sent for the herdsman, who told
him the full story of the servant and the child he had dealt with years before. The now
aged servant was then called forth. Naturally, he was reluctant to confess the truth, but
urged on by Oedipus, he blurted out the tale of how Jocasta and Laius had ordered him to
take their infant son into the country and slay him, and how he had not found the heart to
do the deed.

At that moment, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Oedipus was the infant of
whom they spoke. Jocasta, his wife, was also his mother, who had long ago turned him
over to be killed, and the man he had slain at the crossroads was none other than his true
father.

At the awful realization that she had actually been an accomplice in the fulfillment of the
prophecy she had sought to get rid of, Jocasta rushed to her room. By the time Oedipus
broke down the heavy doors, it was too late. He saw his wife and mother "hung by her
neck, from twisted cords, swinging to and fro." In agony, Oedipus cut down her body,
tore the broaches from her clothes, and with them, put out his eyes, screaming. Now
when he finally has seen the truth he is blind physically.

The tragedy of Oedipus Rex is not so much that Oedipus commits two horrible crimes,
after all, he was fated to do so, and committed them unknowingly. [It is rather, that he,
like his doomed parents before him, who ran blindly into the destiny he was trying to
defy.] Pride was his downfall as it is in most Greek stories.

Oedipus Rex is well known for dramatic irony. Everybody in the audience knows from
the start that Oedipus himself is the guilty person he seeks out for punishment. The
viewers' enjoyment comes as they see and hear the facts build up, bit by bit, until it
suddenly dawns on Oedipus that he is his father's murderer. The blind man Teiresias’s
who shows Oedipus to “see the light” highlights the irony. Oedipus, though his physical
eyes can see, is blind to the truth. When he finally does come to see the truth, ironically,
he blinds himself.

Perhaps the irony of the oracle believed to be wrong, when in truth it is right, will haunt
Oedipus the most. At first he was power stricken and drunk from the power that he
gained from the riddle he completed. As his investigation dragged on he became weak
and helpless from that same power he gained as he still pressed on for an answer.
Although the true answer to the riddle does not lie in some great phenomenon, the
greatest mystery begins and ends with man.