Though it has been around ever since the existence of humanity, dealing with grief never seems to get any easier. Such is an idea embedded in Arthur Miller’s play “All My Sons” in which he presents the painful effects of grief, the hardships of facing it, and finally the denial that can result from avoiding it.

The passage begins with the cracking of the apple tree, immediately bringing the tragedy of the past to the surface and recreating the pain it causes. The significance of this is emphasised by the fact that Kate “was standing right when it was wrecked”, the apple tree, arguably, is a symbol of Larry, its branches adorned with fruit, and its young life a parallel to Larry’s own, yet the fact that “it broke” diminishes the expected potential of such blossoming youth, transforming it, rather, into heartbreaking sorrow at a life that should have been lived but was taken before it could. Such sentiment is shared by Kate as “she ran back into the house and cried in the kitchen”, sobbing so hard that Chris “could hear her right through the floor”. The tragedy of such a scene is only heightened by the fact that she is crying in her “house”, the diction in which points to the symbol of warmth, family and love, except in her case it is incomplete, just like the piece in her heart where she has always kept Larry, the place that should never have been threatened by the inversion of the natural order of life.

Such obvious pain points to what one would expect to be loss, thus the fact that she insists Larry is alive presents one of the many ways of dealing with grief: denial. This is demonstrated through Chris’s frustration at the fact that they “allow her to go on thinking that [they] believe with her”, realising that in feeding her futile hopes they had “made a terrible mistake” since they were “being dishonest with her.” The semantic field of “mistake" and “dishonest” all point back to denial, thus the fact that “this kind of thing always pays off” foreshadows the harm that is to be done. Interestingly, however, the diction in “dishonest” is not restricted to only how they have supported Kate’s belief, but also Joe’s guilt, which is arguably the root of all this grief and denial; thus, Chris remarks that “it’s insane” to still be waiting “after three years”. Perhaps Miller encourages his audience to consider the extent to which this is delusion as the diction “insane” suggests, for as we come to know by the end, Kate knows of Joe’s malfeasance all along. Faced by the horrifying prospect that a “child” [could] be killed by his own father”, her delusion is likely born out of obligation (coping mechanism). As we gather from the passage, there is no lie in the raw pain of her heartfelt sorrow towards losing Larry, and rather than face such torment, it is easier to simply construct a lie in that allows for hope, albeit futile; thus perhaps, over time, this obligatory hope transformed into an indispensable form of self-protection.

This refusal to believe in Larry’s death conflicts with the rest of the family, presenting the tension that arises from grief. In spite of the sorrow they all share, Kate is the only one that seems unable to move on, and such tension is established as Chris reveals that “nobody believes Larry is alive anymore”, a blunt, truth-filled statement that rebels against everything his mother believes. Such contrast is heightened as he discloses that he has “no hope anymore” and hasn’t had any “for years now”. All this underscores the fact that in a quick-paced world that seems to have moved past this incident, the Killers are still trapped inside the past, to the point Chris faces difficulty in marrying the girl he loves simply because she is part of it. Within the family itself, everyone has given up hope except for Kate, and even hers is not real. Yet Chris’s constant nagging for Kate to accept her son’s death reveals that it is not the fact that the family does not want to move on, but they are unable to, for beneath the superficial tranquillity and success of their wealthy life is a secret that is bubbling away and threatening to be unveiled, the very secret whose exposure would trigger the grief Kate so desperately wants to avoid, and the very grief that traps them in the past, and this state of uncomfortable tension.

Through the pain, insanity and conflict that arise from grief, Miller shapes his play into a very realistic human experience; we know certain things are not real, yet we pretend that they are. We lie to others and we lie to ourselves; we hurt others, and hurt ourselves, yet through his play perhaps Miller intimates that such irrationality, such absurdity, is simply a part of being human.