King\'s Men: A Character Profile of Willie

¶ … 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 (Warren 126).

Being used as a stooge enrages Stark, and he is determined never to be taken advantage of again. 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 who have criticized Willie in the past so Stark can tarnish their public reputations. Burden -- a passive man, a chronic depressive and the narrative voice of the book -- acts as a kind of 'class traitor.' Stark likes to have men who might potentially be against him under his control, including the thuggish Lieutenant-Governor Tiny Duffy who intimidated and belittled Willie before Stark entered politics. This strategy ultimately backfires when Duffy tells the brother of a woman Stark his having an affair with about the governor's indiscretion, which ultimately results in Stark's assassination at the hands of the brother and Duffy assuming the seat of power.

When using the information provided by Jack Burden, as a political outsider regarded as crass, Stark takes particular glee in learning about the peccadilloes of others who have committed offenses, such as the morally upright Judge Irwin and the former Governor Stanton. Burden's investigation of a fraud perpetuated by Stanton also reveals Jack Burden's own parentage -- Judge Irwin was Burden's actual father. This shows how, as dirty as Stark may seem, the immorality embodied by Stark is endemic to the political system itself.

The fact that Stark is unable to control his appetites in his private life proves to be his undoing. He has affairs with several women, including his secretary and Governor Stanton's daughter Anne. He has no sense of the consequences of his actions -- he believes so long as the public loves him, he can do as he pleases. He has overcome so much to become governor, the obstacle of marriage seems a laughable one. Anne Stanton and Stark are so far apart on the class hierarchy, Burden initially jokes: "The picture of the daughter of Governor Stanton at lunch with Governor Talos would certainly throw Virginia De Vaux, editor of the Society Chronicle, into a tizzy" (Warren 293). Yet Anne and Stark soon 'share' far more than a lunch appointment, thanks to Stark's charm.