All the King's Men... One of the Greatest American Novels

Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the King's Men, has been adapted to film twice in two completely different American eras, first in 1949 and more recently in 2006.

The fact that Warren's great novel has again been made into a movie is suggestive of the book's continued relevance. All the King's Men is a great novel for several reasons, foremost of which is the writing itself. The novel's craft and shape are impeccable. The structure of the book allows for the central themes to be expanded upon in every section so that the themes become the orientation of the book and the characters serve those themes while maintaining an interesting, natural and engaging story-line.

The reason the centrality of theme is a good thing in All the King's Men is due to the fact that the themes are universal, complex, and flexible enough to be both practical and philosophical. In careful and purposeful composition, the sections of the novel move back and forth across time without losing focus or confusing the narrative, resulting in a 475 page book with great depth, engaging themes and a story with a fantastic, climactic ending.

Themes in All the King's Men

Ultimately, this is a novel about history but the nuanced idea of personal history is presented as being more interesting and more complex than the history of nations that we might find in text books. There are stories about ourselves that we hold on to, our most important tales, which sometimes turn out to be untrue. There are lies that, upon discovery, we wish were the truth.

Robert Penn Warren takes up issues of the difficulty of truth and the complexity of history and explores the murky distinctions between right and wrong in this novel within a context of state politics. It's a story where everyone gets their hands dirty, from the most pure-hearted doctor out to save lives to the reviled old attorney who leaves his young son and wife. Hands are dirtied and laundry is aired. As governor Willie Stark says a few times in the novel, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud."

No one can rise above the stench of humanity, but those who are strong enough can find a place for themselves in the great big stinking world.

One of the great questions that arise from All the King's Men is how much innocence can a corrupt man hold on to (and how much corruption is already there in an innocent man)?

Opposites Attract in All the King's Men: Willie Stark & Jack Burden

Willie Stark, the novel's most towering figure, rises to political power and breaks a lot of rules to do it. The innocence and good intentions that Willie begins with never completely vanish, however, and the novel explores the co-existence of Willie Stark's increasing power and declining innocence without condemning the politician or simplifying his character.

While Willie Stark's strong-arm tactics take center stage, the politician is seen in the full complexity of his office '" governor of a southern state '" and he is never fully understood. One of the great themes of All the King's Men is found in the notion that, try as we might, we will never fully understand most people, especially ourselves.

In this regard, Willie Stark is a direct foil for the protagonist and narrator of All the King's Men. Jack Burden is a reporter from a rich family who goes his own way. He goes his own way because he is cannot accept ambivalence, ambiguity, corruption, and betrayal. These are the issues that he runs from, always moving toward the truth and always discovering that most answers just lead to new questions.

Burden is not a boy scout and he is harassed by many acquaintances about his friendship and his working relationship with the figure of Willie Stark. Stark is seen as possessing all the qualities that Jack Burden cannot tolerate and his friends deride him and despise Burden for attaching himself to Willie "The Boss" Stark. Yet Burden never yields or flinches or shies away from his position in Willie's office.

Regarding his first meeting with Willie Stark, Jack muses upon his ability to choose for or against the inevitability of this character, Willie Stark: "I could have walked right out and left the two of them there till hell froze over, and just kept on walking. But I didn't, and perhaps it was just as well, for maybe you cannot ever really walk away from the things you want most to walk away from."

In the end, Jack Burden does leave Stark's office, but it isn't because the politics get to him. He leaves because his personal life becomes entangled with that of Willie Stark. He leaves because he finds that a little truth can be enough and that the struggle to discover the bigger truth is a zero-sum endeavor. You can either have the little truth and be yourself or you can give away everything and believe "that all life is but the dark heave of blood and the twitch of the nerve."

Burden leaves and then comes back because he chooses to live in "the agony of will", as he calls it, and to believe in this that there is some meaning to the decisions people make and to the histories they create for themselves, however tangled they may become.

More from this Contributor:

Robert Penn Warren - America's Most Under-Read Novelist

Great Short Novels

Writers of the American South

Midwestern Writers

Sources:

Warren, Robert Penn; All the King's Men, 1946, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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