More About Ambiguous Writings

During the summer of 1960 I stumbled upon the type of literature I like best. In those days I was an avid reader of modern drama.  I was a bit put off by much of the drama of the 1930s since during the Depression much writing was valued for its social significance; or message—an underlying thesis supposedly showing how to reorganize society. Always a more of an art for art’s sakest, I felt that the work of art itself should be valued for itself rather than whatever message one could extract from it. (Hence, I was pleased to find support from T. S. Eliot and the New Critics—as they were called at the time and later—John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and company.  One afternoon I was reading Arthur Miller’s play ALL MY SONS.  The basic plot follows. Joe Keller, a successful businessman, a manufacturer of air plane parts, is hosting a backyard barbecue shortly after World War Two.  During the afternoon we learn that Keller’s firm accidentally produced a series of defective parts.  Fearful of the company’s financial loss, Keller hastily decided to send them on to the government. The possibility is made known that the defective mechanisms caused the crashes of several planes and the deaths of several pilots, very likely including that of Larry, one of Keller’s two sons.  Chris, the idealistic second son, becomes aware of his father’s malefaction and demands that Joe Keller turn himself into the police and threatens to report his father if the latter will not do so.  The upshot is that Joe Keller, unable to face the disgrace  and a prison sentence, shoots himself in the head. Chris is horrified at what his noble intentions have caused. The play astounded me. Here was more than a simple disguised treatise on the evils of wealthy businessmen. (And indeed some should be condemned). But here was a play showing that life is complex, complicated—that we are all subject to what has now become called the law of unintended consequences.  Today we commonly demonize those who disagree with us, but Miller portrays Keller with some sympathy.  At the conclusion Keller’s wife urges Chris to forget what happened and live. But, having unintentionally caused his father’s suicide, how can he? The play stunned, excited, and overwhelmed me.  It showed me that life is more complex than I had suspected. Ever since I have generally preferred this type of writing rather than that which sought to promote a specific religious or political doctrine.