Spradlin 1 Kellen Spradlin Dr. Steven Florczyk English 203 24 October 2016 Jack Burden s Development and Its Effect on Willie Starks Robert Penn Warren s, All the King s Men, follows the corrupt political journey of Governor Willie Stark through a first person narrator, Jack Burden. Willie began as a small town lawyer who rose into the governor position where he used his power and authority to blackmail and manipulate his subordinates and political enemies. Willie constantly found ways to bring down his enemies and get the upper hand in the political atmosphere. He did this with the help of Jack, his personal assistant, who was commonly given the task of finding information for Willie to use for blackmail. However, this eventually bothered Jack, especially when he was asked to dig up dirt on Judge Irwin, who Jack later found out was his father. When investigating Judge Irwin, Jack was forced to forget his idealistic views of the world because he found out the Judge had previously accepted a bribe that led to one man s suicide. This information led Adam Stanton to accept the director position at Willie s hospital and Anne Stanton to have an affair with Willie. Upon discovery of the affair, Adam murdered Willie causing Jack to leave his job and exit the world of politics. Throughout the novel, Jack went through many stages of development that shaped his outlook on life and responsibility. These developmental stages also helped reveal the inner workings of Willie Stark s political history and decisions. In All the King s Men, Robert Penn Warren used the breakdown of Jack s development into four different stages including, Idealism, the Great Sleep, the Great Twitch, and the Web, to explain the
Spradlin 2 complicated growth of the narrator and to illuminate important points of change in Willie Stark s attitude and action in his political journey. The first stage of Jack s development was the Idealism stage. This notion of Idealism presented in the beginning of the novel, reflected the naiveté that both Jack and Willie possessed before they were heavily involved in the corrupt political arena. Jack first identified himself as an Idealist in the beginning of the novel by saying, I was a brass-bound Idealist in those days. If you are an Idealist it does not matter what you do or what goes on around you because it is not real anyway (45). Here, Jack explained that he used Idealism as a way to ignore the reality of situations by not acknowledging that anything happening was real or had any effect on life. This concept of Idealism could also be viewed in a very childish and innocent manor. This was exemplified when Jack was reflecting on his childhood in Burden s Landing. One specific memory he mentioned was when he was playing with his friends in the middle of a storm, but they were not aware of the gravity of the situation because they were too caught up in their play (154-155). Similarly, in adult life, under the principle of Idealism, Jack did not acknowledge the harsh realities of situations because he was concerned with protecting himself. One instance this occurred was when he contradicted Willie about whether or not he would be able to find dirt on Judge Irwin. Jack did not want to believe this to be true, so he did not want to look because if he did not know anything about it, it was not real (234). This juxtaposition of opinions between Willie and Jack revealed how Willie ridded of any notions of Idealism and came to accept life s cruelty. He had transformed from, Cousin Willie to the Boss, symbolizing his loss of naiveté and Idealist views as he climbed the political ladder (77, 233). Another stage that Jack s life could be divided into was the Great Sleep, which was a period of disconnect he often took after learning disturbing news. The first time this happened
Spradlin 3 was when Jack lost his job at the Chronicle because he did not want to report on MacMurfee in his column, rather he wanted to report on Willie (148). He escaped to his hotel room where he refused to get out of bed and continue on with everyday life. Upon reflection, he said, But for the present I would lie there and know I didn t have to get up, and feel the holy emptiness and blessed fatigue of a saint after the night of the dark soul (150). He used this metaphor comparing himself to a saint to portray how drained he was after losing his job. Additionally, he went into a Great Sleep toward the end of his research on the Cass Mastern papers. He could not handle the implications of the truth he discovered. Warren described the moment, Or perhaps he laid aside the journal of Cass Mastern not because he could not understand, but because he was afraid to understand for what might be understood was a reproach to him (284). A final example of Jack going into a Great Sleep was after he found out about Anne and Willie s affair and escaped to California, a place where he felt he could forget this newly discovered reality (408). In all of these examples, Jack used the Great Sleep as a tool to avoid his hardships. Similarly, when Tom was injured in the football game, Willie did not rush straight to the hospital because he was avoiding the seriousness of the situation before him (556). Both of them delayed pressing responsibilities that could impact the lives of others. Thus, revealing that they both had some amount of selfishness that drove them in making decisions. After driving a man with a facial twitch home, Jack entered into his third stage of development, the Great Twitch. This stage consisted of the idea that everything in life happens involuntarily and without your control, therefore you have no responsibility for it. While describing the twitch, Jack said, That the twitch can know that the twitch is all. Then, having found that out, in the mystic vision, you feel clean and free. You are at one with the Great Twitch (473). In this quote, Jack used figurative language, clean and free, to describe the lack
Spradlin 4 of responsibility he felt for the happenings in life under the Great Twitch. He could feel free that he no longer had to carry the burden of guilt for his actions. The next day, he described himself feeling like a renewed person because he knew the truth, he said, So I did my daily tasks and ate my daily bread and saw the old familiar faces, and smiled benignly like a priest (474). He used a simile here comparing himself to a priest who had found the truth and was living a renewed life. The Great Twitch also had an effect in Willie s life. In the end of the novel, referring to Willie, Jack said, There was, in fact, a time when he came to believe hat nobody had any responsibility and there was no god but the Great twitch (656). However, Willie was not very fond of this idea because although it ridded him of his guilt, it meant that he did not have control over his life. Like Idealism and the Great Sleep, Jack used the Great Twitch as an excuse to help him avoid taking on the guilt and responsibility of his actions. Unlike the three previously mentioned stages of development, Jack s final stage, the Web, involved understanding the cruelties in life and realizing how single events can affect everyone through an interconnected network. The first mention of this idea was when Jack was researching the Cass Mastern papers and discovered that one man s decision to have an affair resulted in another man s suicide, a broken marriage, and a female slave being sold into horrible conditions. He used a spider web to symbolize this idea that everything is connected. Warren wrote, He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web, and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle, and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether you meant to touch the web of things (284). This symbolization represented Jack s newfound reality that he would be held responsible for his actions and could be punished for
Spradlin 5 them, like the spider punished his prey. By the end of the novel, both Jack and Willie accepted this principle and applied it to their lives. For example, Jack took in his father because he knew it was the right thing to do and did not want to disturb the web of people in his life (658). Also, Willie took the hospital contract away from Gummy Larson in order to make a clean deal because he knew corruption caused the web to ripple and he wanted to rid of the backlash of corrupt decisions (582). In the end, the web is what led to Willie s ultimate demise. Had he not had an affair with both Anne and Sadie he would have avoided Sadie s jealousy, which led her to relay the message to Adam, whom she knew would kill Willie. The four stages of Jack s life not only told of his development, but also Willie s. Throughout the novel, they both grew from innocent men working in honest jobs to shady political figures working in a corrupt organization. As they learned that they could no longer apply ideas such as Idealism, the Great Sleep, and the Great Twitch, they began to accept responsibility for their actions and transform into more caring and trustworthy men. However, this transformation was not enough to protect Willie from his ultimate demise predicted by the title of the novel that alludes to the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty. This allusion foreshadowed Willie s inability to come back because no good actions could ever undo his unjust acts and put him back together again. He could not escape the future he had made for himself through his abundance of selfish choices and lack of accountability.
Spradlin 6 Work Cited Warren, Robert Penn. All the King's Men. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946. Print.