"All the King's men" by Robert Penn Warrens

Gliederung

• Robert Penn Warren: The author and his times
• All the king's men: The plot
• All the king's men: Willie Stark
• All the king's men: Jack Hurden
• All the king's men: Sugar-boy O'Sheean
• All the king's men: Tiny Duffy
• All the king's men: Lucy Stark
• All the king's men: Tom Stark
• All the king's men: Sadie Burke
• All the king's men: Judge Irwin
• All the king's men: Jack's Mother
• All the king's men: Anne Stanton
• All the king's men: Adam Stanton
• All the king's men: Ellis Burden
• All the king's men: Sam MacMurfee
• All the king's men: Cass Masterin
• All the king's men: Setting
• All the king's men: Themes
• 1. Power and corruption
• 2. Goodness out of evil
• 3. The search for a spiritual father
• 4. The search for knowledge
• 5. Idealism vs. materialism
• 6. Free will vs. determinism
• All the king's men: Style
• All the king's men: Point of view
• All the king's men: Form and structure
• All the king's men: Chronology of events
• All the king's men: The Story
• All the king's men: Section one Mason City
• All the king's men: Section two: Burden's landing
• All the king's men: Section one: The Schoolhouse
• All the king's men: Section two: The Campaign
• All the king's men: Section three: The great sleep
• All the king's men: Section One: Jack Burden
• All the king's men: Section Two: The Boss
• All the king's men: Cass Mastern
• All the king's men: Section one: The scholarly attorney
• All the king's men: Section two: The question
• All the king's men: Section Three: The Answer
• All the king's men: Section one: The hospital
• All the king's men: Section two: Friends
• All the king's men: Anne Stanton
• All the king's men: Section one: The great twitch
• All the king's men: Section Two: Judge Irwin
• All the king's men: Section one: Tom Stark
• All the king's men: Section two: The fall
• All the king's men: Section one: The bloody ground
• All the king's men: Section two: The awful responsibility of time
• All the king's men: On Robert Penn Warren
• All the king's men: The southern Setting
• All the king's men: On technique
• All the king's men: Willie and Adam
• All the king's men: Human nature and history
• All the king's men: Self knowledge

Robert Penn Warren: The author and his times

Huey P. Long, known as "The Kingfish," controlled Louisiana politics for some ten years, until he was assassinated in 1935. He was the law, he was above the law--he ruled with the force of royalty through an effective political machine while serving as governor of the state (1928-31) and U.S. Senator (1931-35). But just as Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rhyme toppled off his perch, so did Robert Penn Warren's fictionalized Huey Long, Willie Stark in All the King's Men. Willie sat high on a wall, but had a great fall--and as you read Warren's novel you will understand why all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Willie together again.

On one level, then, All the King's Men is the study of the rise and fall of a political dictator in the southern United States. On another level, it is the study of a man's journey toward self-knowledge along the winding and difficult paths that emerge from the past. Many elements of Warren's own past went into making this novel. And although the novel explores age-old philosophical ideas, the ideas are not stale or moldy. They come alive because Warren grounds them in his own experience and in vivid characters who flourish and perish in a particular landscape--the American South.

Warren was born in 1905 in the tobacco country of Guthrie, Kentucky, the eldest son of a businessman and a schoolteacher. Political violence was a part of his earliest memories, The Kentucky tobacco wars of 1905 to 1908 raged in the surrounding areas. Many tobacco growers organized themselves against the big buyers, often riding into the night to terrorize other growers who were unsympathetic to their crusade for better prices. These events provided the background for Warren's first published novel, Night Rider (1939).

Poetry and history were also a part of Warren's childhood. His maternal grandfather, a Confederate cavalry officer in the Civil War, frequently quoted poetry to Warren and introduced him to Southern history. As a boy, Warren developed an allegiance to the South, a sense of history,

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