The Biblical expression is, "The love of money is the root of all evil.

" According to that, money itself is not evil, but loving it is. Money itself is a good, necessary tool. However, placing money above morality is evil. The principle here is not that it is wrong to have money or even a lot of it. The principle is that there are those who live their entire lives ruled by and driven by the notion of having more money so that they can one day be rich in their own opinion and perhaps also in the opinions of others. There is a clear lack of contentment, because of which these people compromise on their values, ethics and morality. This statement has been very clearly depicted in the two plays All my Sons and Pillars of the Society. All My Sons : Arthur Miller stated that the issue of relatedness is the main one in All My Sons. The play introduces questions that involve an individual's obligation to society, personal responsibility, and the distinction between private and public matters. Keller can live with his actions during the war because he sees himself as answerable only to himself and his family, not to society as a whole. Miller criticizes Keller's myopic worldview, which allows him to discount his crimes because they were done "for the family." The principal contention is that Keller is wrong in his claim that there is nothing greater than the family, since there is a whole world to which Keller is connected. To cut yourself off from your relationships with society at large is to invite tragedy of a nature both public (regarding the pilots) and private (regarding the suicides). Money, money, money. It's all over All My Sons. Protection of assets leads the characters to commit some unsavory acts .The doctor's wife nags him to make more house calls to up their income. Joe Keller defends his war profiteering because caring for his family, to him, meant growing his business. Joe's idealistic son, Chris, disdains business, but tells Annie, I'm going to make a fortune for you" to his fiance (1.545). In this play, capitalist culture is pitted against human decency, and the two just can't seem to get along. In All My Sons, moral fortitude generally loses to practicality and self-protection. Fearing the failure of his business, Joe Keller ships faulty parts to the military, which causes the death of 21 pilots, and blames it on his partner. His son Chris, while suspicious, protects his share of the business (and his psyche) by neglecting to question his father. The scapegoat's son, George, comes for revenge, but faced with his sister's iron resolve to get married to Chris, leaves with nothing. Morality doesn't have the place in the day-to-day world. In the war, says Chris, men "killed themselves for each other a little more selfish and they'd've been here today" (1.541). The characters in this play, though, are the survivors the selfish and the self-preserving. Keller gives solid arguments during wartime how all his actions are so defensible in maintaining good business practice. He always asserts himself as an ill-

mannered and uneducated person, boastfully taking pride in his financial success without any business education. But gradually his well-flourished business is victimized of downfalls. Here Miller takes this failure in comparison with loftiest politics and awkward system of capitalism which enhance the value of materialistic pursuits rather than the moral sense. The dramatist raises the question how rules of good business are exempted from moral and ethical norms & laws of the certain society (All My Sons Study Guide, 2010).

Summary of All my Sons(Just for reading) Joe Keller, a successful businessman, lives comfortably with his wife, Kate, and son, Chris, in a suburban American neighborhood. They have only one sadness in their lives the loss of their other son, Larry, who went missing in World War II. After three years, Kate still clings to the hope that her son is alive. Chris would like her to give up that hope because he wants to marry Ann, an old neighbor and Larry's former fiance. Ann arrives. Kate, sensing the reason for her visit, gets a little touchy. We learn that Ann's father is in prison for a crime he committed while working in Joe's factory. Faced with a batch of defective machine parts, he patched them and sent them out, causing the death of 21 pilots during the war. Turns out that Joe was also accused of this crime and convicted, but he was exonerated (set free) during the appeal. Steve went to prison; Joe returned home and made his business bigger and better. Soon after Ann's arrival, her brother George follows, straight from visiting his father in prison. He knows what Chris has in mind and is totally against him marrying Ann. Joe and Kate do their best to charm George into submission, but finally it's Ann who sends him away. She wants to marry Chris no matter what. The marriage of Chris and Ann is becoming a reality and Kate can't handle it, because it means Larry is truly dead. And if Larry is dead, she tells Chris, it's because his own father killed him, since Larry was also a pilot. Chris finally confronts his father's guilt in shipping those defective parts. But Chris won't do anything about it. He won't even ask his father to go to prison. Ann, who turned her back on her own father for the same reason, insists that Chris take a hard line. Joe Keller goes inside to get his things. A gunshot is heard. He's killed himself.

Summary of Pillars of Society(Just for Reading) Consul Karsten Bernick is a wealthy businessman and owner of a shipyard in a small Norwegian port. He has based his success on more or less unscrupulous business dealings, but is highly respected by his fellow citizens as a man of impeccable morals. He is married to Betty, and they have a son of thirteen, Olaf. In his youth Bernick had jilted his sweetheart Lona Hessel for the sake of her step-sister's greater inheritance. While engaged to Betty, fifteen years before the opening of the play, he had been discovered in a mistress's bedroom, an event which had dramatic consequences. In order to avoid the scandal, he let Betty's brother Johan, who was about to emigrate to the USA, take the blame. Bernick also started a rumour that Johan had stolen a sum of money. This rumour was to cover up the fact that Bernick's firm was insolvent. When the play opens, he and other leading citizens are planning to bring a railway to the town, and have secretly bought up land along the site of the railway. When Johan returns from the USA, along with his step-sister Lona, and threatens to reveal the secrets of the past, Bernick is in a difficult position, since his business plans are dependent on his reputation as an irreproachable pillar of society. Bernick allows a ship to be launched which he knows is not seaworthy, and only after the ship has sailed does he discover that his own son, who has run away from home, is onboard. Johan threatens revenge when he finds out how Bernick has misused his loyalty and made him a scapegoat in the town. He takes Dina Dorf, daughter of Bernick's former mistress, on Bernick's ship to America, where he will marry her, though he says he intends to come back. The consul believes that three of his own people will go down with the unseaworthy ship, but it turns out that the ship has not sailed after all. Under pressure and encouragement from the sweetheart of his youth, Lona Hessel, Bernick confesses his sins in a speech to all his fellow citizens, who have come to celebrate him as a pillar of society. He urges them all to judge his guilt freely and to start a new and better life without the hitherto hypocritical life-style of the small community.

Interpretation : Bernick used unfair means for his own personal benefits and monetary gains. He is considered as the pillar of society because he is respected as a person who will never compromise on his morality. But he cheated a lot of people, including his lover Lona Hessel for the sake of Lonas sisters greater inheritance.

Also, he blamed Johan for all the crimes that he had committed and to save his face in front of the society. When Johan threatens him to reveal his wrong doings to the society, he attempts to murder him to conceal the truth. But as fate would have it, the ship which he allowed to sail carried his own son. Bernick knew that the ship was not seaworthy but he allowed it to sail because he wanted Johan to go down in that. But now, his son was in the ship. But it turns out that the ship has not sailed after all. Under pressure and encouragement from the sweetheart of his youth, Lona Hessel, Bernick confesses his sins in a speech to all his fellow citizens, who have come to celebrate him as a pillar of society. He urges them all to judge his guilt freely and to start a new and better life without the hitherto hypocritical life-style of the small community.

Rationalization that Bernick used : He rationalized his wrong doing , justifying his act as doing good for the society. As per him , whatever his did was for the society and thus he should not be punished for that.

Learnings : If every man is truthful to himself, then there wont be a need for a society's moral guidance. The spirit of truth is one pillar of society The spirit of freedom: each man has a right to pursue his own happiness, without the need to sacrifice it for the greater good An individual must set himself right before he sets a society right