The Dangers of Shirking Responsibility in Arthur Miller's All My Sons

From a young age, Joe was not treated properly and this damaged his view on trust and his capablity to think that people cared about him. This is demonstrated through his own father leaving him. However, Joyce makes him rethink this. When Joyce met Joe she knew that she wanted to get to know him. When she did she “slowly resolved that someday she would find a way to compensate for the way the world had treated Joe Rantz.” (66) She was the first person to put in effort to make sure that Joe had somebody that he could depend on. Joyce is consistently supporting Joe, even when they can’t see each other. The reason why Joe learns to trust again is because Joyce is dedicated to making sure that he knows that he has someone supporting him. As this recurred they fell in love. When they would see each other Joe picked four-leaf clovers for Joyce. One day when Joe was picking four-leaf clovers he said he had found one, went back to Joyce and “He held out a closed fist, and as she reached out to receive the clover. But as he slowly unfolded his hand, she saw that it held not a clover but a golden ring with a small but perfect diamond.” This is the first sign in the book as real trust from Joe after he got abandoned. This is significant as well because the person who broke his trust, his dad, had a wife whom he just married because he was lonely and she did not treat Joe well. Marriage solidified his decision to trust in Joyce and to separate his life from what his father had done.

“Why did Joe kill James?” No one knows. There is “no apparent reason,” but there certainly are reasons (Dixon 474). Dent depicts very dynamic reasons in the play, from family to social conditions that led to the murder. Joes’ teacher, Mrs. William, states in the play, “They come to class improperly dressed, from homes where they don’t get any home training, which is why they are so ill-mannered” (475-76). Is this true? Joe Brown Jr. comes from a broken family. His father lives with his other family, and he himself had not seen Joe for about four years before the event happened. His mother believes it's one of those things that often happen in a colored bar. It's like a disease, and the Lord is the only protection (478).

In the first chapters I have learned that Joe was dishonest and through his action and choices and this tells me this character cannot be trusted. One reason why Joe is dishonest, is that Joe told Mrs. Robinson (Jackie’s wife) and other people that he wasn't a time traveler even thought Joe was. Another reason is that when Joe got back from the journey Joe didn't tell his teacher that he went back in time Joe said he found it from the baseball cards and lied when he should have been honest although he didn't want people to know. The last reason why Joe is dishonest, is when Joe came back from the first time that he didn't tell his mom that he got chased down from the cops.

He does not understand why his own mother would do such a thing to him. During this moment, Joe begins to transition from precociousness to the confrontation stage. After he kills his mother, he is confronted by Shola, who tells him that his mother is good and she is not the devil. Joe arrives at the Church with his mother’s body being carried in his arms. He lays her at the alter and begins to pray for forgiveness and to say his final goodbyes. His father rudely suggests that he removes Nunu’s body from the church. Joe’s will for his mother and his emotions got the best of him when he confronted his father about the truth and him being his child. Joe was intensely outraged and sat the church on fire burning himself and his father. At the moment of Joe’s death, Joe was in the internalization stage of black consciousness. Joe began to have positive attitudes about his mother’s culture and beliefs.

A source is revealing that Joe Giudice arrived to Fort Dix Correctional Institution "drunk and belligerent." Joe has admitted in the past to having a problem with alcohol. Now he will end up a changed man after having to stay away from it the entire time is in jail. Before Joe headed to prison, he allegedly drank with Teresa at home. Joe knew he would not be allowed a drink for

As they grow, all of the life choices and parenting styles the parent commits to interfere with how the child will develop as a person. With that being said, the father of the child might abuse the mother in front of the child every night when he comes home drunk. Consequently, the child might grow up believing it was okay to hit women. On the other hand, the parents could be raising the child perfectly but what they experience at school could abolish every life lesson that the parents had put before them. As the African proverb states, “It takes a village to raise a child”. No matter who enters the child’s life for any given time, it will affect who the child will become. In the book The Other Wes Moore, both Moore boys grew up in a town filled with violence and drugs. Even though both boys’ mothers raised them properly and gave them every care in the world, the environment that they grew up in paid its toll on both boys. As the other Wes Moore’s mother found out about his dealing with drugs, the first thing she asked herself was, “Who is to blame for this” (74). All of the people that influenced Wes; Tony, the neighborhood, the school system, and Wes’s friends flooded through his mother’s mind at that very moment. “She put them all on trial in her mind,” Moore writes (75). It is not just the mother or the parents who are raising the child, it is the entire village.

A sequence of events leads up to Joe becoming almost completely isolated from the outside world. During his time in the isolated continent, Joe becomes addicted to narcotics; he escapes his pain and anguish by succumbing to detached and paralyzed state of mind. Throughout his journey in this secluded continent, he is faced with his hatred of the Germans and his desire to enact vengeance upon them for all that he has lost. When he meets a German geologist exploring the frozen tundra, he inadvertently kills him. Joe experiences ironic feelings of remorse after so many years spent obsessing over the destruction of the Germans. There was no gratification or fulfillment, for Joe, in the German man’s death. Joe felt repulsed and an abhorrence in himself for his

Joe grows as a character throughout the book, his life began at a very young age when his mother Nellie died of throat cancer, this left Joe growing up without having a good mother figure in his life. Not only that, but Joe was also really sick at a young age by contracting scarlet fever. So he would be staying at his aunt Alma’s home, where he was raised as a young child. Later on when he turned five years old, he went to go back to living with Harry and his newly wedded wife Thula. “Harry Rantz packed his family into his Franklin touring car and headed northeast, to the mining camp where he had been working as a master mechanic for the past year.” (Brown 71). The longer Thula and Joe lived together, the bond between them

As opposed to communicating his outrage he tries to avoid panicking. This is either an indication of incredible resilience or utter shortcoming. There, on the other hand, is a moment when Joe demonstrates that his pride has been harmed, to be specific when he leaves the coin under his wife's cushion in the wake of laying down with her. This is a sudden turn in an identity that is apparently unequipped for harming someone else. Anyhow who can accuse the poor man for he has seen his entire world go into disrepair after the treachery of his loved one. The integrity of his character is completely shown in his pardoning toward the end of the story.

Joe resolved to kill Joanna in order to escape her. “He believed with calm paradox that he was the

So he stands up for himself, which shows he is strong. Joe-Boy is a bad friend, he was teasing Vinny about the dead boy in the text it says “ Are you going to let your mom control your life or what”? And” you going to jump down and touch the dead boy’s face beneath the rock”. That shows that he is getting out of Vinny’s comfort zone, which makes him a mean friend.

Perhaps this innate sense of responsibility is common in “firstborns.” I think that because my mother treated me like a “big girl” when I was younger, I am less inclined, now, to act irresponsible. I was always under the impression that every decision I made was important and would have an effect on the rest of my life. If I made the correct decision, everything would eventually fall into place. This is false, of course, but some individuals find out the hard way. If everything had gone according to my original plans, I would be living in my grandparents’ house as a professional ballerina on a strict diet of rocky road ice cream. Thank goodness for broken plans. There is an up side to this idea. I have discovered that my life has fallen into place in numerous ways. I am an organized, mature, hard working, perhaps a bit stubborn, college student. Although I have not ceased to hope my current plans follow through, I am so excited to see how my life unfolds from a little bit of unexpected happenings.

The audience can relate to Joe and feel sympathy for him because he was a good man who did many great things for his family and in the end paid the ultimate price. Towards the end of the play, Joe's son Chris anguishes over the fatally flawed decision made by his father, thus eliciting the sympathy of the audience. However, this is not enough to detract from the audience relating to Joe as a

The day after John Logan’s death, Joe’s conscious makes the whole event ‘illumined and animated’ in his mind. He begins to relive the nightmare, trying to find the right answers. His guilty conscious accuses him of ‘kill[ing] (John Logan)’. Joe cannot deal with his new-found responsibility and tries to find what he believes to be the ‘truth’. On one hand, he wants the truth to be that he was not an accomplice in a man’s death yet on the other hand he wants to know what actually happened and who was the cause of it. However, the truth is, he will never know. He is left with questions and he who believes entirely in science, math and the nature of knowing, can’t comprehend this fact.

All the decisions Joe makes seem correct to him. But realistically if other people were in his shoes, they might do the exact same thing, but of course others wouldn't see it that way. I love how Authur Miller wrote the character of Joe simply because he shows that "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" the play has a vast amount of imagery to where you almost ask yourself, what would you do if you were in that situation.