(A brief note: I do talk about some details which are essential to the plot, so be aware. This is your official spoiler warning.)

Before beginning to read All the King’s Men, I was under the impression – one of those pesky groundless preconceived notions that so often prove to be wildly incorrect – that it would be a very dry, heavily political novel. Had I done a little research beforehand, I would have discovered that Robert Penn Warren not only won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel, but also for his poetry, making him the only person to win the Pulitzer for fiction and poetry. (He was also a Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress.) Enough about the author, basically I approached  All the King’s Men with a misconception about the content and style, and was surprised, even pleased, to find that I was completely wrong.

Jack Burden, a wisecracking journalist, narrates the tale of and his role in the political career of Willie Stark, an idealistic and determined lawyer turned politician, in the early 1930s in the American South. Stark enters his political career primarily because of the corruption of others – an underhanded affair with a local schoolhouse goes fatally wrong which puts him in favour of the voters, he is the pawn in a political game to try and split the vote of another candidate running for Governor. It is this latter event, and the revelation of his role as a pawn, “a sap”, from his assistant/mistress Sadie Burke that sets in motion Stark’s attitude toward politics. Afterward, Stark is not afraid to use the same corrupt, morally questionable techniques in order to succeed. Eventually, he turns to use these on Jack Burden, his press man, who has close familial connections to influential people in the state. Interestingly, Warren presents these events non-chronologically, as Burden reflects back on their relationship together. It is a bit confusing at first, especially because the chapters are so long and it is easy to get lost in the temporal shifts. However, it is a clever stylistic technique, and comes to echo the theme of time, responsibility and retrospective reassessments of the past.

“Yeah,” I said, “I heard the speech. But they don’t give a damn about that. Hell, make ‘em cry, make ‘em laugh, make ‘em think you’re their weak erring pal, or make ‘em think you’re God Almighty. Or make ‘em mad. Even mad at you. Just stir ‘em up, it doesn’t matter how or why, and they’ll love you and come back for more. Pinch ‘em in the soft place. They aren’t alive, most of ‘em, and haven’t been alive in twenty years. Hell, their wives have lost their teeth and their shape, and likker won’t set on their stomachs, and they don’t believe in God, so it’s up to you to give ‘em something to stir ‘em up and make ‘em feel alive again. Just for half an hour. That’s what they come for. Tell ‘em anything. But for Sweet Jesus’ sake, don’t try to improve their minds.”

It is Willie Stark’s insistence that Burden scrounge around for any dirt on Judge Irwin, a prominent father figure of Jack’s youth and an ally to Stark’s political rival MacMurfee, that the story really springs from. Burden revisits his childhood and adolescence, the people and family members that populated those years and uncovers a hell of a lot more than he ever intended. While it is somewhat questionable, I thought, of Stark to encourage Burden to look into Judge Irwin’s past to find any misdeeds, Burden takes on the role with aplomb. A former student of history, Jack has a keen awareness of the importance of the past, but no real attachment to his own. Burden discovers an incident of bribery and suicide which implicates not only Judge Irwin, but Governor Stanton, the father of Burden’s close friends Anne and Adam Stanton. Unsurprisingly, Stark uses these connections and the knowledge of the event to use Adam and Anne for his own ends as well, making Adam Stanton the head of a new medical centre and taking Anne Stanton, the object of Jack’s affection, for his mistress. To Willie, everything and everyone is a potential political tool.

Feeling betrayed and rejected after finding out about Willie and Anne, Jack heads West, taking a road trip of self discovery, coming out of it with the theory that no one is responsible for anything, instead there is an uncontrollable, involuntary current which guides everything. This seems to be just another way for Burden to diminish his participation when things turn out badly. Burden confronts Judge Irwin about his involvement in the bribery/suicide case, leading to Irwin shooting himself later that night. Jack’s mother reveals that Judge Irwin was Jack’s biological father. Despite the violence that occurs as a result of his actions, Burden takes or seems to show little responsibility toward his part in it, assuaging any guilt by lying about their conversation.

I dismissed the question finally. Perhaps the only answer, I thought then, was that by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it is too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made? At least that was the way I argued the case back then.

The novel ends in a display of bloodshed, Adam discovers the truth about Willie and Anne disrupting his staunchly held belief in the triumph of good and honesty over all else, and shoots Willie; Willie’s over protective driver Sugar Boy shoots Adam. As Jack tries to uncover who set in motion the carnage he comes to accept his responsibility, in part, for what happened. While he shows some awareness of how his actions influenced the actions of others, there still doesn’t seem to be any retribution or repentance for this. He ends with everything he ever wanted, money, the girl, the time to write his monograph on a distant family member and so on. At first, this ending didn’t really have much effect on me, but the night I finished it I woke up during the night and found myself thinking about it, incredibly incensed about how things transpired. Thinking further, it probably just reflects deeper on a comment Willie makes in the novel about how all good is built upon the foundation of corruption.

All the King’s Men is a powerful novel, definitely not the dry political tome I was expecting. Instead it examines the moral responsibility we should take for our actions and the implications and importance of time and hindsight in a detailed and vivid language.