¶ … King's Men: A character profile of Willie Stark. The themes of All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren underline the ambiguous nature of politics in the Deep South and the ambiguous nature of the character of its central protagonist. Willie Stark assumes power as a populist governor of a Southern state long dominated by party elites. He is determined to bring about change but meets with resistance from members of the ruling political and social aristocracies. On one hand, Stark is a sympathetic figure because of his support of the common man. But Stark uses underhanded means to achieve his goals. After a certain point, Stark's corruption begins to seem self-serving rather than justified, regardless of the nobility of his aims. In Stark's views, the ends justify the means and his own political survival is the only moral necessity.

At the beginning of the novel, Warren contrasts Stark as governor and Stark when he was beginning his political career. Stark was not always a cunning manipulator -- once, he was manipulated by the state party elites to run for office to split the vote between the 'country people' and the 'city people.' Stark was a young, idealistic 'country bumpkin' who could barely make a coherent speech before an audience. Then, one night, after realizing that his campaign was a sham and had been constructed to get one of his opponents elected, he got drunk, gave an impassioned speech and withdrew from the race. Thus his political career began. "Whatever a hick wants he's got to do for himself" sums up Stark's philosophy...

He sees himself as the advocate of the 'little guy' and other hicks not taken seriously by the political machine but that causes him to confuse his own advancement with advancing the needs of the rest of the populace. Eventually, he becomes the most powerful politician in the state, wins a gubernatorial election, and is in a position to get revenge on those who never took him seriously. He is paranoid and suspicious, and to some degree, rightly so. Willie's back story explains his present immorality. The system has corrupted him -- he did not create the corrupt system.
Willie Stark rises in politics through his partially crafted, partially genuine persona as a man of the people and his instinctive, magnetic speaking ability. Whatever may be said about 'the Boss' (as he is frequently called), he seems to believe the mythology he has constructed around himself. When he resolve to build a charity hospital he says: "I'm going to call it the Willie Talos Hospital and it will be there a long time after I'm dead and gone and you are dead and gone and those sons-of-bitches are dead and gone and anyone, no matter if he hasn't got a dime can go there" (Warren 326).

Although he is highly suspicious of bluebloods and intellectuals, Stark ultimately decides he wants a 'smart man' to back up his policies of taxing the rich and giving to the poor. He hires a former history PhD candidate Jack Burden as Stark's political operative to find out incriminating information about people…