all my sons quotes 🌳✈️💔

Power of the phatic conversation at the start of the play

Power of the phatic conversation at the start of the play

lacks agenda, expositional, foregrounds events; expresses author’s intentions for AMS - a realist tragedy

“Gonna rain tonight.” - Joe

elision + a fragmented sentence, voice of certainty

Importance of Keller’s colloquialisms

• establishes a low level of formality, introduces him as easy and comfortable, he is a working-class, everyday American.

• also establishes him as a character who represents American society + context (modern tragedy) + humanizes Keller as an essentially good, tragic hero.

• adds a layer of verisimilitude (believability)

• elisions, fragmented sentences, interrogatives

• flouts Grices’ maxims of quantity + relevance

“with the terrible concentration of the uneducated man”

“wry, self-controlled man”

“elephant” - Chris

“bull” - Kate

“be smart now, Joe. The boy is coming.” - Kate

animalistic + derogatory descriptions, foregrounds his arrogance, insolence and superiority.

“Then it can’t rain.” - Jim

highlights Jim’s mistrust in the media + sinicism

The American Dream

• opportunity for social advancement is available to every American with aspirations

• aspirations + pursuit for the unattainable leads to corruption

• upward social mobility

“I don’t read the news part anymore” - Keller

• declarative → hints at arrogance

• news = symbolism of truth → media of honesty, confrontation, and exposition and 1947 = criticism of profiteers: ignoring this enables Keller to engage in his own denial → distances and ostracizes himself from society (poplar trees)

• initiates the audience’s suspicion

• singular pronoun ‘I’ = individualist

“You heard the wind, didn’t you?” - Keller

pattern of interrogatives + tag questions = alludes to lack of knowledge

“Now what’s he want with two Newfoundland dogs?” - Keller

• repetition of questions = gives voice to out of date, relic of past persona

• knowledge of world = based on personal experience

• tag questions = seeking approval → more interested in other’s issues than solving his own

• informal, low-prestige dialect = everyday American → subverts tragedy stereotype

“I would love to help humanity on a Warner Brothers salary” - Jim

• altruism has a cost → his American Dream is grounded by realism + pragmatism

“That was a very happy family used to live in your house, Jim” - Keller

• permeated by a voice of affection

• past tense → suggests Ann’s family was happy + criticizes Jim’s family

“you dog” “Don’t sniff around me.” - Sue

• semantic field of animalistic behaviour

“That’s an arresting gun!” - Keller

• Chekov’s gun

• implies Keller’s suicide was an act of justice

“- almost as though admitting something -" - Kate

• Kate is aware that Chris wants to marry Annie, but refuses to accept that Larry is dead

“You don’t sleep, that’s why.” (Joe to Kate)

• face-threatening act

• enforces his sense of self-righteousness and arrogance

“More, more than a dream.” - Kate

• anadiplosis

• voice of desperation as she strives to assign significance to this dream and maintain her denial

“Remember the way he used to fly…” - Kate

• imperative

• invites to share

“Only high up. Way, way up, …” - Kate

• increased fragmentation + hesitancy → emotive

• sense of inability

"And suddenly he started to fall. And…” - Kate

• fronted conjunction → sense of urgency, out of her control

• ellipsis

“We should never have planted that tree. It was too soon....” - Kate to Joe

• levelling blame = builds dramatic tension

“We’re like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes in.” - Chris

• lack of resolution → their actions are futile

“Get me an aspirin, heh?” - Kate

“Can I get you an aspirin?” - Chris

• motif of aspirin → link to tree

“Why did he invite her here?” - Kate

• immediate shift in tone → accusatory

“Nobody in this house dast take her faith away” - Kate

• idiosyncratic use of language

• non-standard English

• low level of linguistic proficiency

“Calm yourself.” x2 - Keller

“Alright, alright, calm yourself.”

lack of empathy or depth → avoiding/perhaps hedging?

“if he’s not coming back, then I’ll kill myself! Laugh. Laugh at me.” - Kate

• manipulation

• exclamation + fragmented sentences → desparation

“Keller [rises]”

makes himself bigger when feeling threatened

“There’s no jail here!” - Kate

• exclamatory

• imperative

“You gained a little weight, didn’t you, darling?” - Kate to Ann

face-threatening act + tag question

“the poplars got thick, didn’t they?” - Ann

alludes to the Keller’s self-ostracization

Kate referring to Ann as “Annie”

diminishes her

“Well, no, I don’t expect you to wait for him but…” - Kate

hedges

“Don’t be so damned smart! Now stop it!” - Kate

imperative + exclamation

“The man was a fool, but don’t make a murderer out of him.”

“See it human, see it human.” - Keller

anadiplosis

“Be smart now, Joe. The boy is coming. Be smart.”

“Just…be smart.” - Kate

• voice of caution + concern → shared knowledge

• flouts maxim of manner

Significance of George

• Catalyst for Keller’s anagnorisis

• is a lawyer = gives his voice a legal authority and gravities his presence

“I made a grape drink for Georgie. He always liked grape.” - Kate

• diminutive → establishes power through affection and maternal role/voice

• shared history → weaponizes their nostalgia

“If they’re going to open the case again I won’t live through it.” - Kate

• hyperbole

• launches an emotional assault on people → emotional manipulation

• “You’ve got to protect us” → appeal to empathy, declaratives.

“You don’t realize how people can hate, Chris, they can hate so much they’ll tear the world to pieces…”