All My Sons by Arthur Miller

The play takes place in the confines of the Keller backyard. This location is simple and deceptively mundane. Miller describes the setting of All My Sons in the stage directions as the “back yard of the Keller home in the outskirts of an American town” (5). While Miller left out the town’s name in the script, the location is thematically significant for him, and therefore it can also be significant to us. Although he describes the house itself in some detail, we are left to examine the text of the play for a more thorough understanding of its exact location. In addition to place, time is also an important factor. We know that the action takes place in “August of our era.” Miller was likely working on the play in 1946 and the play was produced in 1947, a little over two years since the official end of World War II. The dialog points to a war that has recently concluded, and a pilot, Larry, who has been missing for nearly three years. These facts lead us to conclude that the play takes place in 1946 or 1947, with very little room for alternate interpretation. This, of course, is very helpful to costume designers who like to know what styles of clothing to research. It also helps us understand how timely the original production of this play was to those who saw it. It was current, fresh, and given the very typical American setting, very close to home.

The action of the play takes place over the course of one day, with its point of attack very late in the overall story. It is a perfect storm of events that have been building up over the last few years and have finally converged. The opening scenes are loose and jovial, and subsequent scenes become faster and more intense until the final explosive moments.

Two other aspects of time, the season and the day in which the action of the play takes place, are also important. August is a time of year that is typically quite warm in the northern hemisphere, but also represents the waning of the summer season. Come...