All My Sons as Precursor in Arthur Miller’s Dramatic World

Since its first production in 1947, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons has been performed and appreciated worldwide. In academic studies on Miller, it secures an important place as a precursor, because it has encompassed such themes as father-son conflict, pursuit of success dream in the form of a traditional tragedy as well as a family and a social play. As for techniques, to begin with, the Ibsenite method of dramatization of the present critical situation and presentation of the past “with sentimentality” are obvious. Secondly, the biblical tale of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament allows the play to disguise itself as a modern morality play on “brotherly love.” Thirdly, Oedipus’s murder of his father in Oedipus Rex is used symbolically to place the play in the Western tradition of drama. Taking all these major themes and techniques into account, the paper argues that the play is dramatizing the universal, and that by looking at the conflict between father and son, we can understand why Miller’s message in All My Sons is significant for Japanese andiences.