“All My Sons” – The Story of Joe Keller

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Parenting is a very difficult job; there are no exact guidelines on how to parent. Sometimes parents just don’t know where to draw the line, and that’s exactly what happened with Joe Keller in the novel All My Sons.

During WWII, Joe Keller was in charge of a plant where they made special parts to machines like planes. In order to make more money he had put on default parts which caused the deaths of 21 pilots. Instead of taking the blame he blamed it on his partner in the business and he ended up in jail.

“When you get older, you like to feel you accomplished something. My only accomplishment is my son.” This is a quote from Joe, it shows that he was into his family and wanted the best for them no matter what it took. Joe uses the excuse of doing it all for his son so that he could have a better life but a little extra money won’t make things that much better. It seems that Joe is just trying to live his life through his son. But selling default parts seemed to make them grow farther apart and was not a very efficient way of parenting.

Joe is really considered a “Beast” because he killed people for money to better his sons’ life there are many other ways of doing that instead of killing innocent men fighting for our country. Joe is really thinking all about himself when he should think about all the other fathers whose sons died in the accident. There is no excuse for what he did and his biggest punishment is to live with the lie his whole life.

Joe refused to accept responsibility, so he blamed it on his partner Steve Deever. “I was the beast, the guy that made 21 planes go down. Everyone thought I was guilty but I had a court paper that said I wasn’t.” Chris (Joe’s son) can’t be blamed for being mad at Joe, any human being would be, and Joe committed murder.

Joe didn’t know when to stop when it came to making more money, he was greedy but had a good reason to be and that reason was that he had a family to support. Joe was a role model to his son and wanted his son to respect him but in the end it made his son detest him.

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