Society, Family, Catharsis: Male Protagonists in ‘All My Sons’ and ‘The Cement Garden’ Abigail Daniels 12th Grade

Ian McEwan’s controversial, macabre bildungsroman, ‘The Cement Garden’, and Arthur Miller’s Ibsen-inspired domestic tragedy, “All My Sons”, both profoundly explore societal and familial demands and expectations laid upon men in these epochs-1946 and 1978 respectively. Aristotle’s definition of an ideal protagonist is “a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty… [and] is highly renowned and prosperous- a personage like Oedipus”[1]. Subsequently, corrupt businessman Joe Keller in ‘All My Sons’ and confused adolescent, Jack in ‘The Cement Garden’ are identified as the protagonists rather than the other male leads (Joe’s son Chris and Jack’s estranged brother, Tom). They fulfill these criteria as a result of their shared hamartia- a hubristic nature, defining themselves by their fundamental masculine desires for financial power and success, sexuality and status- which is the catalyst to their downfalls and has a cathartic purging effect on the audience. Ultimately, in both these pieces of notable, postmodern literature, the characters’ protracted struggle with their own identities comes to a cataclysmic ending following the denouements. Joe...