Allison Witt
November 28, 2017
Literature Core
O’Har
The Importance of Choices
Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men follows Willie Stark’s political career, while simultaneously exploring the life of Jack Burden. Through Jack’s narration, Warren highlights both the advancement of Willie’s political career and Jack’s transformation, as he learns about how important the choices he makes are. To explore these character trajectories, Warren plays with the reader’s concept of time by alternating between layered flashbacks and the present day. Jack recalls his past—childhood, college, and post-grad—as well as the start of Willie’s political career. The constant shift between time periods forces the reader to observe the character changes as well as their respective transformations. Warren intertwines the past, present, and future to ultimately suggest that consequences of past actions are inescapable.
Warren utilizes recollections of Willie’s corrupt political past to highlight how they informed his current career successes and failures. In the beginning of the novel, Jack Burden recalls the time when he first met Willie Stark. Warren uses a flashback of Jack being sent to Mason City to write an article uncovering “who the hell that fellow Stark” thinks he is (Warren, 77). In talking to Willie, who was the County Treasurer at the time, Jack learns that he had gotten the job “because Dolph Pillsbury, the Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, was sort of a secondhand relative of old Mr. Stark” (Warren, 88). Nepotism is looked down upon in politics, and it is clear that Warren condemns the way in which Willie gains his political power. Willie had endorsed a low bid construction company for a local schoolhouse, which lost him the election. However, the company who ultimately built the schoolhouse utilized poor materials, and therefore created an unstable building. There was a fire drill and a several children died, as the fire escapes were not sturdy. As a result, the accident was regarded as “a piece of luck for Willie,” since people decided that they should have endorsed and supported Willie (Warren, 97). One parent, who lost a child in the accident, exclaimed, “Oh, God, I am punished for accepting iniquity and voting against an honest man” (Warren, 65). Warren emphasizes that the accident in the past provided Willie with a local identity of an “honest man” in the present. Although Willie got his job initially through nepotism, the incident at the school house enabled him to gain a positive reputation with the public.
After gaining this reputation, Willie decided to run for governor again. Though he lost the first time, he discovered a new popularity after the schoolhouse accident. Though perhaps not the most moral of followings, a voter base is a voter base, and Willie believed “you got to use what you’ve got” (Warren, 205). Warren suggests that Willie will do anything to maintain his unstable political reputation, resorting to corruption which is only self-perpetuating. Once Willie becomes governor, he wants to build a free hospital. However, a scandal surfaces regarding his son, Tom. To hide the scandal, Willie awards the contract to Gummy Larson, who intends to keep some of the money. Yet, Willie ultimately decides he doesn’t want the contract to be in the hands of a corrupt man. This moral decision ultimately costs Willie his life. The last thing Willie says to Jack is, “‘it might have been all different…’” (Warren, 603). Thus, Warren suggests that Willie’s connection with corrupt people altered his life completely. He could have been a completely “different” politician, and if he were, Willie seems to suggest he might still have his life. In this way, Warren uses flashbacks to retrace and highlight Willie’s corruption, return to morality, and punishment. The interconnectedness of these three levels of time suggests that Willie could not escape the consequences of his past actions.
Warren also uses flashbacks to highlight Jack’s transformation, making clear that although singular events may seem divorced from human agency, individuals do act upon and interact with history by living and interpreting it. One flashback concerns the effect of Jack’s kin Cass Mastern. Cass had an affair with a woman named Annabelle, the wife of his friend Duncan Trice. After Duncan found out, he killed himself. Cass writes in his journal: “…the death of my friend, the betrayal of Phebe, the suffering and the rage and great change of the woman I had loved—all had come from my single act of sin” (Warren, 267). Thus, Warren emphasizes that Cass Mastern acknowledges that it was his “sin” that caused his friend to kill himself. He takes complete responsibility for his actions. At the end of the chapter, Jack reveals that he was unable to finish his dissertation. Jack says he was unable to understand the words he had wrote, “because he was afraid to understand for what might be understood there was a reproach to him” (Warren, 284). At this moment in time, Jack is a graduate student, and he is unable to fathom the idea that one’s action can impact another person. Warren suggests that this is a result of the fact that by understanding this it would be a “reproach” to him. Warren suggests that Jack is unable to understand Cass’ acceptance of the responsibility for the affair and the death of his friend. Thus, he lacks an overall understanding of the correlation between his actions and their impacts on others.
Warren highlights Jack’s failure to understand consequential actions in this first flashback. He then builds on that to show what Jack must learn over the course of the novel. In order to aid Willie in his campaign, Jack is asked to find some “dirt” on Judge Irwin in order to blackmail him into endorsing Willie. In doing so, Jack uncovers some unpalatable information about Judge Irwin’s predecessor. After Jack brings up the topic, Judge Irwin tells him that “‘I wouldn’t hurt you…but I could stop you’” (Warren, 523). He later adds, “‘But I won’t’” (Warren, 523). Warren later makes clear why the threat was unrealized; Judge Irwin is Jack’s biological father. Judge Irwin commits suicide, as a result of what he learned from Jack regarding how he got his job. Warren suggests that by choosing to not influence Jack’s actions, Irwin is in fact teaching Jack to accept the consequences of his actions. Jack must accept the fact that what he did instigated Irwin’s actions. Warren highlights Jack’s transformation through his actions surrounding Willie’s death. Following Willie’s death, Jack had a choice to make regarding whether to tell Sugar-Boy, knowing it would lead to revenge. Jack says, “I could tell him” (Warren, 633), emphasizing that Jack has a choice. He understands that his actions affect those of Sugar-Boy. At the end of the novel, Warren concludes with Jack stating that he can finish his novel about Cass Mastern whom “once I [he] could not understand but whom, perhaps, now may come to understand” (Warren, 660). Thus, Warren suggests that Jack finally “understand[s]” how to take responsibility for his actions and understands that each of his actions have a consequence.
Warren intertwines the past, present, and future of Willie and Jack to ultimately suggest that consequences of past actions are inescapable and therefore individuals must take responsibility for their actions. Warren first explores the political career of Willie Stark. Through luck, Willie gains a positive reputation as an honest politician. With this reputation, he starts his political career, in which he resorts to corrupt practices in order to gain more power. Through Willie’s death, Warren suggests that the incorporation of corrupt practices in his career, Willie must always use them, and when he didn’t want to use them, the consequences of his corrupt actions caught up to him. Furthermore, Warren uses flashbacks to highlight Jack’s transformation. While originally Jack is unable to understand how to accept the consequences of his actions, in relation to his doctrine on Cass Mastern, he learns through blackmailing Judge Irwin, he learns the importance of his choices in regard to his future success and actions. Overall, Warren’s use of flashback stresses the transformations of both Willie and Jack.