Name:______Period:______Date:______
All My Sons – Key Quotations
Using the play itself, reread the key quotes and their surrounding context; then, identify the speaker and infer the deeper meaning behind his or her words. Consider the following:
1. What do you already know about the character?
2. Is the character proving to be static or dynamic?
3. What theme might Miller might be making evident?
1.) “And your trouble is that you believe in anything” (Miller 8).
Speaker: __Jim Bayliss______
Inference and Significance:
When Jim tells Frank Lubey that “your trouble is that you believe in anything,” it highlights Jim’s
practical, realistic approach to the world around him. As a doctor, he sees things as they are,
trusting in science and logic; on the other hand, Frank is trusting in astrology- a pseudo-
science. This opposition of practicality and idealism will be evident in other characters later in
the play.
2.) “I would love to help humanity on a Warner Brothers salary” (Miller 8).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
3.) “She enjoys it more when you tell her to lay down” (Miller 9).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
4.) “Today a doctor could make a million dollars if he could figure out a way to bring a boy into the world without a trigger finger” (Miller 10).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
5.) “But I know one thing, Dad. We’ve made a terrible mistake with mother” (Miller 13).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
6.) “So what? I’m not fast with women” (Miller 14).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
7.) “She’s one that didn’t jump into bed with somebody else as soon as it happened with her fella” (Miller 17).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
8.) “She’s wearing out more bedroom slippers than shoes” (Miller 17).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
9.) “We’re like at a railroad station, waiting for a train that never comes in” (Miller 18).
Speaker: ______
Railroad station represents:
Inference and Significance:
10.) You above all have got to believe, you[…]” (Miller 20).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
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11.) “In the Battalion he was known as Mother McKeller” (Miller 21).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
12.) “Well, it never occurred to me that you’d …I mean the shoes are all shined” (Miller 22).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
13.) “It ain’t gonna end till they move back!” (Miller 28).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
14.) “So who flew those P-40’s, pigs?” (Miller 28).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
15.) “[T]hey were whippin’ us with the telephone.” (Miller 28).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
16.) How does Chris define responsibility? How did the men in his company teach him what is was?
17.) Why was Chris disappointed after he returned home? How did people look upon all the death and destruction that he experienced during his army years? Why was the common perception unacceptable to him? (Hint: think “bus accident”)
18.) What made Chris feel ashamed? How was the need to become a “better” person linked to this feeling? Why did he regard Annie as “loot” that he had no right to take?
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Act II
19.) “Men are like little boys, for the neighbors they’ll always cut the grass” (Miller 37).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
20.) “I resent living next door to the Holy Family” (Miller 38).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
21.) “There’s blood in his eye; drive him somewhere and talk to him alone” (Miller 43).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
22.) “The trouble is when you make suckers out of people once, you shouldn’t try to do it twice” (Miller 45).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
23.) “Get your things. Everything they have is covered with blood. You’re not the kind of girl who can live with that” (Miller 47).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
24.) “How could we have an argument, Georgie? We all got hit by the same lightning[…]” (Miller 50).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
25.) “I wear the pants and she beats me with the belt” (Miller 53).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
26.) “A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors” (Miller 53).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
27.) “He’ll need a lot of bullets” (Miller 53).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
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28.) “He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out” (Miller 61).
Speaker: ______
Star=
Inference and Significance:
29.) “An now I live in the usual darkness; I can’t find myself[…]” (Miller 61).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
30.) “There’s something bigger than the family to him[…]” (Miller 63).
Speaker: ______
Something=
Inference and Significance:
31.) “To him the world had a forty-foot front, it ended at the building line” (Miller 63).
Speaker: ______
Him=
Inference and Significance:
32.) “I’m yellow. I was made yellow in this house[…]” (Miller 66).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
33.) “This is the land of the great big dogs, you don’t love a man here, you eat him!” (Miller 66).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
34.) “War and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clean?” (Miller 67).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
35.) “I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father” (Miller 67).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
36.) “Chris…a man can’t be a Jesus in this world” (Miller 68).
Speaker: ______
Inference and Significance:
37.) Explain the significance of the title (Miller 68).