Chapter One ended with Willie Stark giving Jack Burden the assignment of finding something corrupt about Judge Irwin, something that might change Irwin’s mind about supporting MacMurfee’s candidate for the Senate or that might be used in some other way against Irwin if he continues to support Callahan. The events […]
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Many people — students and critics alike — have some difficulty with this fourth chapter of All the King’s Men. The reason for this difficulty is that the story of Cass Mastern is told in this chapter, and this story has nothing to do, directly, with the story of Willie […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 4Summary and Analysis Chapter 3
The events described in Chapter Three take place in 1933, two years after Willie Stark is elected governor for the first time and three years before the events described in the first chapter. Chapter Three does two major things: first, it presents some information about Jack Burden’s background so that […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 3Summary and Analysis Chapter 2
The stories of Jack Burden and Willie Stark become almost inextricably intertwined when Jack first meets Willie, just after Willie became Treasurer in Mason County. Then, when Willie became embroiled in a political controversy, the Chronicle sent Jack out to Mason City to cover the story. Later, the Chronicle also […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 2Summary and Analysis Chapter 1
All the King’s Men is, on one level, a novel about a political strong-man in the South during the 1930s.This aspect of the novel focuses on the political situation into which this man thrusts himself, the conditions from which he arises and tries to change, his rise to power, and […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1Character List
Willie Stark Governor of one of the southern states (most critics assume that it is Louisiana); the son of a dirt farmer in the rural northern part of the state, he challenges the entrenched interests from the southern part of the state and wins, making many enemies in the process […]
Read more Character ListAbout All the King’s Men
All the King’s Men is, without reservation, one of the great American novels. It may rank behind the greatest of the Faulkner novels — The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, and perhaps Light in August — and behind Melville’s magnificent epic of the sea, Moby-Dick, but it belongs among […]
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