All My Sons characters

Appears from the start

A prosperous manufacturer and family patriarch in his early sixties. Warm, sociable, and proud of the business he built for his sons, he was cleared after his factory shipped defective aircraft parts during the war while his former partner remained imprisoned. He hopes Chris will inherit both the company and his practical view of responsibility.

Also known as Mother

Appears from the start

Joe's wife and the mother of Chris and Larry. She refuses to believe that Larry, missing in action for more than three years, is dead. A storm that breaks Larry's memorial tree renews her conviction that he will return, and Chris's wish to marry Larry's former sweetheart threatens the hope on which she depends.

Appears from the start

Joe and Kate's surviving son, a former army officer who now works in the family factory. Troubled by how quickly ordinary life has replaced the solidarity he felt with his men during the war, he wants to marry Ann and build an honest future with her despite his mother's belief that Ann still belongs to Larry.

Also known as Annie

Appears from the start

The daughter of Joe's imprisoned former partner and Larry's former sweetheart. She returns to the Keller home after years away because Chris has invited her, and she reciprocates his love. Having accepted Larry's death, she hopes to marry Chris despite Kate's resistance and the history dividing their families.

Appears from the start

Ann's brother, a New York lawyer and childhood friend of Chris. After visiting their father in prison, he becomes convinced that Steve was made to bear sole blame for the defective parts and urgently travels to prevent Ann from marrying into the Keller family.

Appears from the start

The Keller family's former neighbor and Joe's business partner during the war. He is serving a prison sentence for allowing cracked cylinder heads to be repaired and shipped to the military, a decision linked to the deaths of twenty-one pilots. His children have cut themselves off from him.

Appears from the start

Joe and Kate's elder son, a wartime pilot who has been missing for more than three years. His family planted a tree in his memory, but Kate treats any acceptance of his death as a betrayal. Though absent, he remains central to the relationships among the Kellers and Ann.

Appears from the start

A physician who lives next door to the Kellers. Intelligent and weary, he once hoped to pursue medical research but chose a financially secure practice. He is Chris's friend and observes the tensions around the Keller family with more understanding than he initially states.

First appears in chapter 2

Jim's wife, a blunt and practical neighbor. She resents Chris's idealism because it revives Jim's wish to abandon profitable medicine for research, and she distrusts the respectable story the Kellers tell about Joe's wartime case.

Appears from the start

A good-natured neighbor who stayed home during the war and now pursues astrology as a hobby. At Kate's request he calculates whether Larry's disappearance occurred on a favorable day, a possibility she uses to sustain her belief that Larry survived.

Appears from the start

Frank's wife and a former sweetheart of George. She has built a cheerful domestic life with Frank and their children, and her unchanged warmth briefly recalls the neighborhood as it was before the war and the factory scandal.

Appears from the start

A neighborhood boy who plays a make-believe jail game with Joe. His uncomplicated trust in Joe helps establish the comfortable public role Joe occupies among his neighbors.