All My Sons

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Was Joe a narrow minded businessman inherently, or did the society play a part in shaping him the way he was. It might be true that the social need to get recognition by earning exorbitant amount of money might have caused his actions. But the ultimate decision to go ahead with faulty cylinders was Joe’s himself. There has to be a limit to which one should let society’s pressure break someone's moral fabric. Joe justified everything by thinking whatever he was doing was for the good of his family. This is a narrow approach where he is limiting his social responsibility to only his family. The society might have limited his scope of thinking, where becoming a successful businessman is everything and losing all at once is taboo. He might not have even expected that they would not catch it in the inspection, but taking that risk where life and death are involved was morally wrong, no matter if he would have lost the business or not. He might not even have lost the contract if he would have come clean.

The figure on the right indicates the level of consideration set an individual can have. We can see that Joe considered his family to be the center of all his decisions and did not care what the impact of his decisions might have on others. Larry’s responsibility towards society had a slightly broader sense. [pic 1]

Comparing this frame of social responsibility with someone like Mahatma Gandhi, Saint Joan or Galileo presents a stark difference. Mahatma Gandhi, particularly, dedicated his life for the society and placed very little importance to himself and also to his family.

The question that the play also tries to raise is whether one can actually escape from his responsibility towards society, or do one’s decisions limited to consideration set finally come back to bite oneself. Joe took the decision to send faulty cylinders after mending them to the army, thinking this was necessary for his family, and he did not care about the effects it could have on other pilots. But, finally he comes to know that his own son Larry had committed suicide because of him.

This particular concept is quite relevant even in context of leaders in the corporate world. The single point objective being forced on the CEOs is that they are responsible for maximizing shareholder’s wealth. But the firm itself does not exist just for shareholders, it also has its responsibilities towards employees, its customers, its suppliers and also its collaborators.

Idealism vs. Practicality

The major theme that this story touches upon is that a human has the potential to behave in an idealistic manner but he/she eventually falls somewhere. Once this fall has been experienced, it is only downhill from that point on. This is illustrated to us when Dr. Jim Bayliss says, “once its out it never lights again”. Chris Keller, the protagonist, occupies the top of reader’s attention while viewing these dynamics. He stands up to his highest ideals up to the point of the main revelation. After this, he falls because he allows himself to not arrest his father. The reason for this fall is that faith in his own idealism is shaken when he realizes that he suspected his father all along but did not do anything. Mrs. Bayliss even calls him a hypocrite for spurring values of idealism in her husband while he himself was guilty of holding his father as innocent.

Secondly, given the narrow frame of mind, Practicality is an ideal in itself. Repeatedly Kate chastises George that Frank Lubey has led a comfortable life by ignoring the war and ideals and caring only about himself. Jim defends his actions by desperately saying that he did it Chris. The chance that he took at that defining moment of his life was for Chris. Both Kate and Jim are convinced that they are doing the right actions and defend their stances passionately, because their frame of mind is narrow.

Narrow vs. Broad View point

We shall now discuss how these themes of narrow and broad view points apply to real-life corporate scenario.

“I'm his father and he's my son, and if there's something bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head!”

This sentence exactly resonates the way certain companies view the world. For instance, Vedanta wanted to mine the Niyamgari Hills without any form of consent from the tribal people living in that region. Despite vocal demonstrations by the tribals, the firm did not yield. Its view point and end objective is only profitability in its income statement and its quest only stopped when the Supreme court ruled against it in 2016. This novel is a desperate plea from Arthur Miller for firms and individuals to expand their world view and feel empathy for the larger world around us.

Where does the boundary of responsibility end? Family, Society, Nation, Universe? When faced with practical implications and real-time responsibilities, this question becomes very complex and multi-faceted. At the top management level, such ethical questions form the crux of discussions and the outcome determines the scope and type of role the firm plays the society.

“Don't you have a country? Don't you live in the world? What the hell are you?....”

This dialogue reflects the above discussed issue and it may seem an impractical complaint to some of the new profit-making firms. But if we look at long-standing firms like the Tatas, one of the reasons they have withstood the test of time is that they have looked at the society as an extension to themselves at all points of time. They have played a vital role and spent good amount of money in building institutions and giving back to the society. This is an example of a firm who looked at the greater society and country and thrived because of it and not in-spite of it.