All the King's Men

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1946

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to racism, sexual violence, enslavement, suicide, and abuse.

Jack Burden remembers a trip to Mason City three years ago with Governor Willie “the Boss” Stark, his wife Lucy, and their son Tom, a talented football player. Accompanying them are Tiny Duffy, Willie’s lieutenant governor, and Sugar-Boy, his driver. When they stop at the pharmacy in town, Willie is instantly swarmed by constituents. Willie’s popularity is not only clear from the fervor of the people around him but also by the picture of him on the wall, six times his own size. As Willie leaves, the people demand a speech, and though Willie initially resists, he launches into a speech saying he is not a “gimme” politician here to campaign, but merely here for a visit. As Willie’s group passes the local schoolhouse, Jack remembers meeting Willie back in 1922, when he held the much less powerful position of county treasurer for Mason County. Jack was a reporter, and they met in the back of a pool hall with Mr. Duffy, the Tax Assessor, and Alex Michel, the Mason County Deputy Sheriff, to discuss the bond issue for building a local school.

The group soon arrives at Willie’s father’s house, which is run down because Willie wants people to think he is still the same man from Mason City. His family is here for a photo opportunity, and the photographer, who comes in a different car with Sadie Burke, Willie’s secretary, directs Willie to sit with every configuration of his father, wife, son, and old dog there is. Jack takes a break and goes out to the barn behind the house, where Willie soon joins him for a drink.

Sadie comes running out to tell Willie that Judge Irwin endorsed Callahan for US Senate over Willie’s own man. Angry, Willie sends everyone home but his family, Sugar-Boy, and Jack. At dinner, Willie announces that he, Sugar-Boy, and Jack are going for a drive after dinner. They drive to Burden’s Landing, 130 miles to the southwest and Jack’s hometown. Willie intends to speak to Judge Irwin, a man Jack grew up, about the US Senate race. As they drive down, Jack thinks of his hometown friends Anne and Adam Stanton and his mother. He loved Anne, and though he grew apart from the siblings, he still occasionally speaks with them. His mother, who lives near Judge Irwin, keeps marrying younger men after his father, Ellis, left them. In his father’s absence, Judge Irwin becomes his father figure.

When they arrive, Jack goes to Judge Irwin’s door and the Judge invites him in to talk. Before he can close the door, Willie appears and invites himself into the study, where he pours himself a drink. Willie asks Judge Irwin why he did not pick Willie’s own man, Masters, and Judge Irwin tells him he knows about Masters’s loyalty to Willie and is uncomfortable with such an arrangement, his conscience leads him to another candidate. Willie threatens to find dirt on Judge Irwin and to ruin his career but Judge Irwin is undaunted, just as Jack expected.

As Willie and Jack leave, the Judge is dismissive of Jack and his job with Willie, angering Jack. They drive away and Willie directs Jack to find any information he can on the Judge, saying there is always something in a man’s past, and that even if it takes 10 years, he needs to make it stick. Looking back at this trip, Jack thinks of how Masters, who failed to win the US Senate seat, is now dead, as are his friends Adam, Judge Irwin, and Willie.

Chapter 2 Summary

Jack’s first trip to Mason City is in 1922 when The Chronicle sends him to investigate possible corruption in the bid for the schoolhouse contract. He sits on the porch of the harness shop and listens as a group of old men complain that Willie wants to grant the bid to a company that will bring Black laborers to town. Jack then goes to the courthouse, where he meets the chairperson of the county commissioners, who asserts that the commission chooses the construction company they think is best even if it is the most expensive.

Jack connects with Willie, and together they go to Willie’s father’s house, where he and his wife Lucy are staying because they have fallen on hard times: Lucy has lost her job at the school, and Willie is unlikely to win reelection. Willie explains that he wants to go with the lowest bid, but the commissioner is stoking racist fears against it. The commissioner knows the highest bidder personally and will receive kickbacks from the contract, even though the company’s bricks are rotten.

In the coming weeks, Willie tries to convince the townsfolk, making informative pamphlets, but he loses the election and the corrupt high bidder wins the schoolhouse contract. In the long run, Willie’s failure to win reelection benefits him. During a fire drill at the schoolhouse, the bricks holding the fire escapes collapse and three students are killed in the fall. Willie becomes popular overnight as people view his opposition to the bid as a sign from God.

Willie’s popularity spreads, and soon he runs for governor. The race is split between Harrison, who represents the city, and MacMurfee, who represents the country. Hoping to pull votes away from MacMurfee, Harrison’s camp convinces Willie, another rural politician, to run. They send Tiny Duffy to be his campaign manager. Willie’s campaign struggles, as the people’s support leads him to act as though he is destined for office. He has many ideas but gives boring speeches filled with facts and figures and lacking emotional appeal. When Jack starts following the campaign for The Chronicle, Willie begins confiding in him. Jack tells him to spice up his speeches, asserting that emotional appeals are more effective than factual ones.

The campaign arrives in Upton for a barbecue, and Willie tells Jack he knows he won’t win and suspects he was set up to run in order to benefit Harrison. Sadie joins them, and when Jack tells her of Willie’s thoughts, she admits to the secret plan and goes on to mock Willie for being weak and not benefitting from the situation. This news leads Willie to begin misusing alcohol earnestly for the first time, and he falls asleep on Jack’s bed. Jack sleeps in Willie’s room, and the next morning, Sadie asks Jack to get Willie to the barbecue when he can. After hours of rest and coffee, Willie’s hangover only improves when Jack gives him more alcohol.

Willie still wants to go to the barbecue and downs the rest of Jack’s alcohol before he goes on stage to give a speech. Drunk, Willie goes off script and tells the crowd of his life as a hick and of how Harrison is using him to win the race, blaming Tiny Duffy. He withdraws from the race, saying he will return on his own terms and endorsing MacMurfee. Willie campaigns for MacMurfee and later, in 1930, enters the race again and wins, and then wins a second term, making Tiny Duffy his lieutenant governor to remind him of who is in charge.

Jack, meanwhile, quits The Chronicle when they tell him to be more supportive of MacMurfee in his columns. He goes for a time with no job, sleeping and doing nothing. He calls this feeling the Great Sleep, which he experienced twice before, when he walked out on his PhD and his wife. Jack reconnects with Adam, now a surgeon, and Anne Stanton, who despite their success, still treat him as they did when they were childhood friends. Jack finally finds a job when Sadie calls telling him that Willie wants to see him. Jack goes to the Capitol and is offered a job and dinner at the mansion. When Jack asks about the responsibilities of the job, Willie merely says that something will come up.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

Willie’s populist appeal in his home state relies heavily on The Politics of Perception. He has built a coalition among people tired of being dismissed for their rural origins, convincing them that he is one of them. To protect this identity as he becomes governor and enters a new world filled with riches and bribery, he makes carefully calculated moves to avoid the appearance that power has changed him. An important moment that illustrates this commitment is Tiny Duffy’s suggestion that Willie avoid helping a local boy accused of murdering the son of a doctor: “You know how a doctor is in the country. They think he is somebody. And maybe it got out how you was mixed up with trying to get the feller Wynn’s boy off, and it wouldn’t do you any good. You know, politics” (21). Tiny Duffy reminds Willie to prioritize optics over loyalty to his friends. He believes that if Willie helps the boy escape legal repercussions, people will think he turned city, using corruption to protect the son of a friend rather than letting justice for a respected doctor be done. Willie, however, needs no such reminder. A master of political optics, he is already well aware of the risk, which is why he arranges to send the boy a lawyer who doesn’t “want his name in lights” (20). He is triangulating between overlapping constituencies here: To refuse to help his old friend would also open him to charges of having betrayed the people who put him in office. He must find a way to appease one group of voters without alienating another, so he helps the boy quietly.

As Willie accumulates more power, he becomes more brazen in using that power to achieve his goals at the expense of others, evidence of The Corrupting Nature of Power. One of the first examples of this occurs when Willie threatens Judge Irwin for not supporting his candidate for the US Senate: “You know, when this conscience business starts, ain’t no telling where it’ll stop, and when you start the digging—” (47). Willie’s threat is just veiled enough to allow him plausible deniability. Judge Irwin has said that his conscience will not allow him to do Willie’s bidding, and Willie’s response implies that only those who have never done wrong can afford to have a conscience. The more Willie becomes aware that everyone around him is corrupt, the more his power grows, as he learns to use other people’s corruption for his own gain.

Willie’s power grows in concert with his understanding of Truth as an Instrument of Power. In this, his trajectory mirrors that of Jack, the reporter who narrates the story. Willie starts out as a naïve idealist, campaigning for what he believes to be right and relying on accurate facts and figures to make his arguments. This does not result in much success, however, as no one listens and his campaign for governor is soon floundering. When he realizes that his whole campaign has been engineered as a spoiler to defeat MacMurfee, Willie’s perception of politics changes:

[T]hey wanted to get a hick to run to split MacMurfee’s hick vote. Did I guess this? I did not. No, for I heard their sweet talk. And I wouldn’t know the truth this minute [...] if that fine woman right there hadn’t been honest enough and decent enough to tell the foul truth (92).

Rather than feel humiliated, Willie turns this “foul truth” into an opportunity for a campaign speech. This is an important lesson for him: Truth is power. If he had not known this truth, he would have remained at the mercy of the more seasoned politicians who were manipulating him. Now that he knows, he can turn the narrative against them, using it to present himself as an honest man of the people and his opponents as shrewd manipulators.