All the King's Men

Like many of those who enter politics in All the King’s Men, Willie undergoes a transformation in which his innocence is corrupted through his interactions with power. Having met Willie during his first gubernatorial campaign, Jack remembers a man committed to doing good, staying away from corruption, and attempting to sway the people with accurate facts and figures. Even when he discovers that his campaign is a vote-splitting ploy, he stands on his principles, refusing the money and influence of other politicians and pledging to finance his own campaign “even if he had to put another mortgage on his pappy’s farm” (96). After Willie becomes governor and experiences the power that comes with it, he adapts to the corruption of political life. He protects his men caught taking bribes and extorting people and relies heavily on blackmail to force his opponents and detractors into line. When others challenge his methods, he argues that his way of governing is only natural, comparing politics to a machine: “There never was a machine rigged up by man didn’t represent some loss of energy” (393). Grift, bribery, and embezzlement, in this analogy, are simply the energy lost to the workings of the machine. His focus is on his goal, and if some waste is produced in the form of unethical political practices, he will accept it.

Judge Irwin plays an important role in the life of Jack Burden, as both a father figure to Jack and at times a foil to Willie Stark. Judge Irwin presents himself as an honest politician, always following his conscience and refusing to budge at threats. After Ellis Burden, Jack’s presumed father, leaves the family, Judge Irwin becomes “more of a father to me than those men who had married my mother and come to live in Ellis Burden’s house” (40). Jack looks up to Judge Irwin as a model of how to be a good man. He teaches him, welcomes him into his home, and becomes a strong advisor and confidante to Jack. Jack’s work with Willie, however, does put a strain on this relationship, as Judge Irwin disapproves immensely of Willie’s form of governance, expressing this opinion many times to Jack as he stands stalwart against Willie’s efforts to blackmail him into supporting his agenda.

Later, Jack struggles with the revelation not only that Judge Irwin is his biological father but also that he has not always been as scrupulously honest as he portrays himself to be: “My new father, however, had not been good. He had cuckolded a friend, betrayed a wife, taken a bribe, and driven a man, though unwittingly, to death. But he had done good. He had been a just judge. And he had carried his head high” (353). Reconciling himself to this moral ambivalence—recognizing that few people are either purely good or purely corrupt—is an important part of Jack’s character arc in the novel.

Adam Stanton is Jack Burden’s childhood best friend and a successful surgeon in the state. He is also the son of former Governor Stanton and an idealist who turns away from Willie’s corrupt politics and hopes to do good through his career in medicine. Jack comes to realize that Adam is a foil to Willie. His idealistic view of the world and his hopes for politics pit him directly against Willie’s unscrupulous pursuit of power.

 It is his commitment to ethics, along with his relation to Anne Stanton, that draws Willie’s attention to Adam as he selects a director for his hospital project. When Jack explains to Adam why Willie wants him, he emphasizes Adam’s helpful nature: “That you can’t see somebody with something broken without wanting to fix it. Somebody with something rotten inside him without wanting to take a knife in your strong, white, and damned well-educated fingers, pal, and cut it out” (237). Adam’s commitment to his profession reflects his obsessive nature, needing to fix people, just as he obsessively plays the piano and, after his sister’s affair with Willie is revealed, obsessively pursues and murders Willie, whom he sees as evil.

Anne, more than any other character in the novel, believes in seeing the best in people. She consistently expects others to act in the right way and encourages them to do so. In many ways, she is a foil to the corrupting institution of politics, which seeks to pit people against each other. This commitment to bringing goodness out of people characterizes Anne throughout the novel. She falls for Willie because of his desire to help people by building the hospital. She sees goodness in Willie, and she also sees in him someone with the power to make change happen. This expectation of goodness is reflected in her everyday interactions, particularly with Jack. When she enlists his help to convince Adam to not quit, he sees the expectation on her face: “It was a tentative, apologetic sort of smile, which said please and thank you and at the same time expressed an innocent and absolute confidence that your better nature would triumph” (322). Anne remains committed to bringing out the best in people throughout the novel, acting almost as a guide for Jack as he finds his way through the morally and ethically corrupt political world. Anne’s expectations of the world are based on a personal confidence that others will always inevitably move toward goodness, and this is not shaken, even with the revelation of her own father’s role in Judge Stanton’s corruption.

Outside of Jack, Sadie Burke is Willie Stark’s most trusted and influential advisor. She is with him from the beginning of his first gubernatorial race and credits herself with making him into the politician he is. She is initially sent down from the Capitol to watch over him to make sure that his campaign succeeds in splitting the MacMurfee vote. She is very comfortable with the corruption and extortion around her, committed to advancing herself by any means necessary. When she accidentally reveals that Willie’s campaign is meaningless to him, she recognizes her mistake but soon turns it to her advantage:

She saw that she had made her mistake. And it was not the kind of mistake for Sadie Burke to make. She made her way in the world up from the shack in the mud flat by always finding out what you knew and never letting you know what she knew (80).

Sadie’s power is knowing everything there can be to know and using it ruthlessly to achieve her goals. When she accidentally ruins Willie’s campaign, she berates him for being weak and not perceptive enough to extort the other campaign. By doing so, she helps plant the seeds of the politician Willie will become by showing him how to achieve what he wants.

Tiny Duffy, Willie’s second-term lieutenant governor, is a representation of the career politicians that Willie threatens and attempts to push out. Tiny Duffy originally runs Willie’s campaign as part of the vote-splitting plot, and Willie recognizes that Tiny Duffy wants to be in politics to make money and will stay with him because of his power. Tiny Duffy’s attitude makes it easy for Willie to abuse him:

Tiny Duffy became, in a crazy kind of way, the other self of Willie Stark, and all the contempt and insult which Willie Stark was to heap on Tiny Duffy was nothing but what one self of Willie Stark did to the other self because of a blind, inward necessity (98).

Willie attacks Tiny Duffy in this way to release his own interior criticism of politicians and deflect those feelings away from himself as he begins to be corrupted by power. Willie is always quick to criticize Tiny Duffy for any kind of corruption, even though Willie also commits it. Tiny Duffy becomes a reflection and shadow of Willie, following him and taking the abuse in hopes of eventually profiting. Tiny Duffy proves his agency in his final act in the book, and his role in murdering Willie demonstrates the cyclical nature of corruption and the desire for revenge in politics.