All the King’s Men delves into the shadowy corridors of power, where the pursuit of influence reveals its darkest facets. In Robert Penn Warren’s searing narrative, the seemingly noble ambition of Willie Stark spirals into a maelstrom of corruption and despair.
As the governor’s once-idealistic vision for societal reform becomes entangled in a web of deceit, the novel exposes the grim realities lurking beneath political grandeur. Through Stark’s fall from grace, Warren paints a chilling portrait of how the intoxicating allure of power can erode integrity and spawn a landscape scarred by moral decay.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Set in the Deep South, All the King’s Men examines in all its complexity the influence that members of a closed society have on one another.
Most of Warren’s large cast of characters are corrupt in some way. Their corruption stems from indignation traced back to the American Civil War—a war fought by idealistic young gallants who felt humiliated less by losing the war than by watching their land being plundered during the “Reconstruction” period (when the states that had seceded during the Civil War were reorganized under federal control and later restored to the Union).
Warren’s corrupt political leader, Willie Stark, and others of his kind have fallen into the worst kind of depravity—that of not knowing right from wrong.
Warren analyses the myth that social and religious ghosts haunt the landscape of the devastated Civil War South—the wrath of a Calvinistic God dominates the landscape, demanding suffering and repentance for sins committed by the “fathers”. Too proud to repent, Warren’s characters must learn their lesson over and over. Their defiance is also their strength and their glory, and if characters such as Willie Stark can learn humility, their suffering will make them noble.
Warren uses convolution and confusion, a technique from Gothic fiction, to create this landscape haunted by allegorical ghosts. Reality changes constantly, its image moulded not by time but by human interpretation. Society is like a haunted castle, its nooks and crannies occupied by hostile spirits whose shapes are indistinguishable from their surroundings. Believing they can never escape from this sealed trap, characters allow themselves to wallow in decadence. Only by confronting the demons present at every turn can a character gain enough strength to escape.
Background
All the King’s Men describes the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a political leader and governor of an unnamed southern state, during the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The state is a thinly disguised Louisiana, and readers and critics have drawn inevitable parallels between Stark and Huey Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932. Enormously popular with his poor white constituency—which was suffering terribly from economic havoc wreaked by the Great Depression—Long was fiercely dedicated to improving the standard of living in rural Louisiana through tax reform, expansion of paved roads, construction of bridges, and increased support for charity hospitals.
He achieved these ends through any means possible, indiscriminately using his vast power to manipulate any political situation to his advantage.
After his election to the US Senate, Long remained governor until his hand-picked successor could assume the governorship. He essentially served as both Louisiana governor and a US senator until 1935, when he was gunned down by an assassin in the presence of numerous bodyguards.
Themes and Characters
Instead of presenting Stark as a monster of evil and iniquity, a nightmarish demagogue who exploits the poor and middle-class citizens who form his constituency, Warren’s sympathetic characterization portrays him as a disillusioned idealist whose actions, though pragmatic and frequently illegal and unethical, often lead to humanitarian progress.
Stark, who enters politics seriously when his criticism of a defective school building’s construction makes him a temporary hero, is driven by a passion to provide better public services for the rural people of his state. Stark’s murder, which provides the dramatic climax of the novel, grows out of his dream to build an extraordinary hospital and medical research centre to serve the people of the state (and commemorate his son).
It is one of the many ironies of the novel that the pragmatic and unethical Stark, who will blackmail political opponents and use bribery if convenient, does more to improve the quality of life for the people of his state than generations of more genteel and supposedly more honourable predecessors.
Moreover, as a demagogue and power broker, Stark is not an isolated figure who simply manipulates the illusions and baser emotions of the voters. Instead, Stark is the fulfilment of the aspirations and dreams of his constituency—mainly poor farmers and small businessmen of the state—as well as the embodiment of their hatred and resentment. When Stark boasts, in his rabble-rousing addresses, that he and the crowd share an identity as rednecks and credulous fools, he becomes a figure whom the voters can identify as a member of their class, a man who has managed to overcome an unfair system.
In fact, at times he seems to be less a person than an embodiment of the passions of the crowd, and this is part of Stark’s tragedy.
Stark’s pragmatism produces evil consequences as well as social progress, particularly for those closest to him. Stark’s loss of innocence and abandonment of idealism in a quest for power destroy his relationship with his wife; his ruthless methods of political infighting cause the death of Judge Irwin and anguish for Anne Stanton and her brother Adam, who represent the state’s older and more traditional ruling class. Stark’s obsession with power even causes him to neglect his son, Tom, who becomes a worthless playboy leading an empty life before he is tragically injured in an American football game.
Yet if Stark’s pursuit of power and his pragmatic efforts to attain a measure of political justice for his class are rather ambiguous, so too is the high-minded moral idealism of Stark’s antagonists, Judge Irwin and Adam Stanton.
The novel’s narrator Jack Burden, a disillusioned and cynical troubleshooter for Stark, discovers that Irwin—supposedly a man of incorruptible integrity—took a bribe from a utility company when he was younger and struggling with debt. Ironically enough, this discovery, which provides Stark with the material to threaten blackmail and leads to Irwin’s suicide, humanizes the “upright judge” and makes him more sympathetic in the eyes of the reader.
In addition, Burden later learns that Irwin, his mentor and surrogate father, was also his biological father.
Similarly, Adam Stanton’s idealism turns out to be flawed. Stanton’s father, supposedly an honest governor, participated in the utility company scandal, and Stanton himself compromises his principles to become a surgeon in Stark’s proposed medical complex. Finally, Stanton cannot accept flaws in others, for the discovery that his sister has become Stark’s mistress compels him to assassinate the governor.
History, the drama of conflicting ideas and forces in politics and society, brings about the fatal collision of Willie Stark, the “man of fact”, and Adam Stanton, the “man of idea”. Warren’s novel suggests that both the pragmatist and the idealist are merely actors whose choices often produce ironic and tragic consequences.
Although the action of the novel focuses on Willie Stark and the results of his manipulations, the central theme is Jack Burden’s search for values and faith in the meaning of life. Burden’s life, at the beginning of the novel, has been a series of disappointments: his father, Ellis Burden, the “Scholarly Attorney”, is a futile and beaten failure; his mother is domineering and sexually promiscuous; his adolescent romantic idyll with Anne Stanton has ended in frustration; his years as a graduate student in history have produced only a failed dissertation because of his inability to comprehend the motivations of Cass Mastern, the central figure in his study of the Civil War; his marriage to Lois has proved meaningless.
As a publicity man and trouble-shooter for Willie Stark, Burden’s disbelief in nearly everything can be subordinated to his loyalty to a man who at least believes in the efficacy of ruthless and pragmatic action.
Burden’s deepest problem is that, like T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock (in the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, 1915), he is unable to take any set of values or cause seriously, or to commit himself to any purpose in life other than observing others.
In his worst nightmares, Burden is haunted by the fear that life is nothing more than the “Great Twitch”, the dance of blood along the arteries and veins. When his life comes to a crisis, Burden takes refuge in the past and retreats to a state of moral limbo, the paralysis of consciousness and will that he calls the “Great Sleep”. When he finds that Anne Stanton, whom he has always loved, has become Stark’s mistress, Burden reacts by leaving town and driving west on Route 66 for three days, until he finds himself in a lonely hotel room in Long Beach, California.
Reflecting on this experience, Burden sees it as symbolic of the American trek westward: a flight from the disappointments, burdens, and responsibilities of selfhood.
However, Burden’s futile flight westward is also a crucial act in his discovery and acceptance of self and responsibility.
Even more important is his recognition of his own role in Judge Irwin’s suicide; whatever moral choices Irwin had made in the past, it is Burden’s discovery of them and Stark’s threat of public exposure that motivates Irwin’s suicide.
The painful truth that he has helped cause the death of his father provides Burden with unimpeachable evidence of the existence of freedom of choice, and forever destroys the spectre of determinism (“the Great Twitch”) that previously nurtured his fear that life was meaningless.
The tragic climax furthers Burden’s moral education. Adam Stanton assassinates Governor Stark and is in turn killed by Stark’s guardians. Investigating the reasons for Adam’s act of desperation, Burden finds that neither he nor Anne Stanton is totally without responsibility, although it is Sadie Burke, Stark’s perennial lover and girl Friday, who has precipitated the novel’s final tragic confrontation.
Warren’s definitive statement of the novel’s theme comes in Jack Burden’s closing paragraph where he tells the reader that he has married Anne and is caring for his supposed father, who is dying.
The story Burden has been telling, he says, is not just the story of Willie Stark, but his own story as well, “the story of a man who lived in the world, and to him the world looked one way for a long time and then it looked another and very different way”. Burden confesses that he no longer believes in “the Great Twitch” because “he [has] seen too many people live and die”. As further evidence of his acceptance of moral responsibility, Burden has resumed work on his failed doctoral dissertation, for he now believes that he understands the lessons learned by Cass Mastern.
The theme both of Burden’s narrative and of Cass Mastern’s story is a similar one: involvement in either history or the personal lives of others brings tragedy, but out of tragedy emerges a recognition of the need for moral responsibility.
All the King’s Men abounds with moral ambiguities.
Violence, betrayal, blackmail, infidelity, and political corruption shape the plot, and the conclusion does not present a clear victory of good over evil. For Warren, Adam Stanton’s idealism is as dangerous as Willie Stark’s Machiavellianism. However, from this morass, Jack Burden develops from a passive and cynical character to a man ready to accept moral responsibility.
The novel can be seen therefore as a call for individuals to take action, tempered with forethought, and to reject the dogmatic impulses that doom Adam Stanton’s and Willie Stark’s attempts to change their worlds.
In the book, the American South is portrayed as a land of ignorance and indifference, where demagogues such as Willie Stark continue to be held in esteem.
From its history of corruption during the Reconstruction era to its long battle against civil rights reform, the South has earned a negative reputation. All the King’s Men, written in a different era, does not improve the American South’s image, but it does offer an insightful analysis of the dynamics that create people such as Stark, who is meant to be a sympathetic, though tragically flawed, character.
Literary Style
All the King’s Men draws on a rich tradition of literature, ranging from Jacobean drama to the novels of William Faulkner.
Parallels with Faulkner, an older contemporary of Warren and a fellow southerner, are especially striking. Both writers use southern settings to explore universal themes, particularly those of moral and spiritual corruption, the effects of time, the search for meaning in the universe, and the need to create meaning if none exists. Both writers point out the dangers of people adhering too rigidly to any set of rules or patterns that they may have created in the quest for meaning. Warren’s Adam Stanton and Faulkner’s Quentin Compson of The Sound and the Fury (1929) are inflexible idealists, each of whom dies because he cannot bear the discovery that his sister falls short of his ideals.
Warren states that “Life is Motion toward[s] Knowledge”, and neither Adam nor Quentin can tolerate that motion, which, like time, inevitably brings knowledge capable of destroying any ironclad set of ideals.
At the end of The Sound and the Fury the reader realizes that the Compsons’s uneducated maid, Dilsey, has taken on the responsibility for finding meaning in a world ravaged by the fluidity of time, while in All the King’s Men, Jack Burden sets out to assume the “awful responsibility of time”.
One of the major concerns of Warren’s novel is to discourage the romantic views of history and historical eras that often develop as time passes.
He employs the 18th-century device of inserting a short tale in the body of the novel to reinforce this theme. Just as Jack Burden’s investigation of Judge Irwin topples the myth of a virtuous elite governing the state in the past, so too does the Cass Mastern narrative subject the myth of a heroic past for the pre-war South to harsh criticism. Mastern’s tale is a melodrama of secret and scandalous love that results in tragedy for both lovers when Annabelle’s husband, Duncan Trice—who is also Mastern’s best friend—commits suicide. The affair ends in recrimination and self-loathing on both sides.
Of the characters in All the King’s Men, the masterful Willie Stark and the cynical but eloquent Jack Burden are the most fully developed.
They are undoubtedly the two most memorable characters of the novel, and are perhaps Warren’s best creations in his prose fiction. Stark is vulgar and coarse, yet utterly believable and likable. His gift for oratory and his flair for the dramatic make him the centre of nearly every scene where he appears, especially after he loses his political naivety.
Similarly effective is the characterization of Burden, whose cynicism modulates into reflective meditation as the novel unfolds. As a thoroughly aware observer and a culpable participant in Stark’s tragedy, Burden fully understands Stark’s motivations and the nature of his choices. Moreover, Burden’s own moral growth from a spineless antihero to a man capable of assuming impressive responsibilities is described in a thoroughly believable manner. By the end of the novel the reader has come to accept the authority of Burden’s narrative without question.
Questions
Throughout the novel Jack seems to have been telling Willie Stark’s story, but in the end the reader learns that the story equally belongs to Jack. Retrace the events in the novel to show how Jack changes more than Willie.
Robert Penn Warren claimed that he never researched the facts about Huey Long’s life but that he lived the legend of Huey Long when he taught at Louisiana State University. Find out more about Long’s career and compare the facts to the events of the novel.
While studying for his master’s degree at the University of California, Warren became ardently interested in Jacobean drama. What are the main characteristics of Jacobean drama? Show how All the King’s Men follows the same literary tradition.
Read The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and compare it to All the King’s Men.
Some critics believe that Warren is the most significant poet of his time and that he will one day be remembered as a poet who also wrote novels. Read his narrative poem Brothers to Dragons and analyse the similarities and differences to his fiction.
Along with John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate, and others, Warren was responsible for founding one of the most important American literary movements of the 20th century, called “new criticism” or “formalism”. Read parts of Warren’s textbooks Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943), and write an account of the movement.
Adaptation
Robert Rossen directed a black-and-white film adaptation of All the King’s Men (1949), which won the Academy Award for Best Film. Broderick Crawford, as Willie Stark, and Mercedes McCambridge, as Sadie Burke, both won Oscars.
Warren’s own dramatic version of the novel, which opened in New York in October 1959 and was published in 1960, pares the story down somewhat but retains all the main characters of the novel, developing an episodic but intense dramatic tragedy presented with a minimum of props. The drama adds a new character, “the Professor”, who begins by presenting a textbook view of Willie Stark as an evil demagogue who gets his well-deserved punishment.
Warren then sends Jack Burden to the stage to protest against the Professor’s conventional view and to become the narrator and chorus of the action. The drama unfolds swiftly and relentlessly, and Stark’s residue of humanity and idealism is brought into focus as much as his pragmatism.
About the author
Robert Penn Warren enjoyed a distinguished career as a novelist, poet, scholar, university professor, and man of letters.
His first widely read work was the Pulitzer Prize-winning All the King’s Men, and it was not until the 1950s that he seemed to court a wider audience. His best fiction maintains a high level of intellectual and dramatic interest, and yet remains accessible to ordinary readers.
Warren was born in Guthrie, Kentucky, on April 24, 1905. After growing up in rural Kentucky, he began writing seriously as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University in the 1920s, where he intended to specialize in science.
However, his interests changed at Vanderbilt when he came under the influence of John Crowe Ransom, already a poet and critic of some stature and a major figure in the awakening of southern culture labelled the “Southern literary renaissance”. Under Ransom’s guidance, Warren changed his interests to literature, and began writing poetry as part of a literary group called the “Fugitives”, after the title of the literary magazine in which they published their work. Warren’s early verse was rather imitative, and it was not until the 1930s that he began to find his voice as a poet.
Continuing to pursue his literary interests, Warren took a postgraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley, earning a master’s degree in 1927.
While studying at Oxford University from 1928 to 1930 as a Rhodes scholar, Warren published his first book, John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929). His long teaching career began with a brief stint at Southwestern College in Memphis, Tennessee, followed by another short-term appointment at Vanderbilt University.
In 1934 he accepted a position at Louisiana State University, where he taught until 1942. While on the faculty there he helped to found the prestigious literary magazine Southern Review.
During the 1930s Warren published verse, literary essays, and short fiction while teaching at Louisiana State. In 1938 Warren and his colleague Cleanth Brooks published the popular and influential literary textbook, Understanding Poetry. This work presents methods of literary and rhetorical analysis developed from principles espoused by T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, and Ransom. As a handbook of what was called “new criticism” it served as the model of poetic analysis for students over the next two decades or more.
Warren published his first novel during this decade as well; Night Rider (1939) met with fairly good reviews but modest sales.
From 1942 to 1950 Warren taught at the University of Minnesota. His departure from the South may well have given him a better perspective on his material, for it was here that he produced All the King’s Men, his masterpiece in fiction. The novel deals with the rise and fall of a masterful southern political leader during the Depression, and its protagonist is obviously modelled on the legendary political leader Huey Long, whom Warren observed during his tenure at Louisiana State.
A popular and critical success, All the King’s Men earned Warren the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes and established his reputation.
For the next 20 years Warren continued to publish novels at regular intervals, although after the success of his long dramatic poem, Brother to Dragons (1953), he increasingly concentrated his creative energies on verse. World Enough and Time (1950), a massive and romantic novel based on the “Kentucky Tragedy” of Jeroboam Beauchamp and Ann Cook in the 1820s, was viewed as a somewhat successful work by many, but its reception also marked the beginning of complaints about Warren’s idiosyncrasies.
Another historical novel, Band of Angels (1955), gained popular, though not critical, success and gave rise to the negative view of Warren as a serious novelist openly courting commercial success.
In 1950 Warren and his wife of 20 years divorced, and he moved to the East Coast, taking a job with the Yale Drama School (1950-1956). His new environment and his marriage in 1952 to Eleanor Clark, a talented Connecticut novelist, may have helped to stimulate his creative energies, particularly as a poet. The publication of Promises (1957), which gained Warren his second Pulitzer Prize, marked the beginning of an enormously fertile period of work.
During the next three decades, he gained immense respect as a poet, signalled by, among other awards, a third Pulitzer Prize (his second for poetry) in 1979. He also served on the faculty of the Yale English department from 1961 to his retirement in 1973.
During Warren’s long and distinguished career as a novelist, poet, academic, and teacher of literature, he wrote numerous non-fiction works of scholarship and social commentary. During his Yale years, he wrote valuable works on John Greenleaf Whittier and Theodore Dreiser, helping to improve the reputations of those underrated writers. He also authored insightful volumes on the meaning of the American Civil War and on the function of literature and poetry in a democracy.
During the civil rights movements of the 1960s, he lent support to the cause of black equality by publishing an enlightening book of interviews with influential black leaders and writers. The most enduring of all this work, however, may be the dramatization of All the King’s Men that he published in 1960.
During the most recent decades of his career, Warren’s energies were largely devoted to writing poetry, including a revised version of Brother to Dragons (1979). His entire canon increased to about 50 books, among them numerous volumes of verse, including a narrative poem about Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé Native American people. Warren’s long career as a poet was crowned by his being appointed the first Poet Laureate of the United States in 1986.
He died of cancer on September 15, 1989, in Stratton, Vermont.