What Were Millers Main Intentions in the First Act of All My Sons

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What were Miller’s main intentions in the first act of All My Sons? In the first act of All My Sons, Arthur Miller does a number of things to intrigue his audience and help them to understand the antecedents of the drama in order to get to know the characters better. He introduces a number of characters, whilst cleverly using literary techniques to hint at possible tensions and give the audience a number of questions that, in order to find the answers to, they have to watch/ read the rest of the drama very carefully. In the first stage directions, Miller introduces the audience to the main character and protagonist of the drama - Joe Keller. We are informed that he is “nearing sixty” and is “ of stolid mind and build”. When considering the era that this play is set in, the audience realizes that if Keller is nearing sixty, he will have lived through the American civil war, the roaring twenties, the first world war and more recently WW2 and the great depression of the 1930’s. Thus, by informing us that Keller is nearing sixty, Miller may be trying to show the audience that this is not a young man with little life experience- we are looking at someone who has been through a lot- and someone who’s character is likely to have been affected by his experiences. The word “stolid” means someone is both calm and dependable, showing little emotion. I believe that by describing Joe as being of stolid mind, Miller is trying to encourage the audience to begin to develop an immediate bond with his character- as the ability to remain calm and dependability are both characteristics that many of us cherish in friends and family. We also gain an immediate first impression that Joe will be a very realistic and sensible person who doesn’t panic and keeps himself together… I believe this is Miller’s intention- to make the reader develop a very quick first impression of the
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