"Cliff Notes - All The King's Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)
After this series of tragedies, Jack tries to make sense of his life. He marries Anne and begins writing a biography, not of Willie Stark but of a man whose own tragic experiences during the Civil War era reflect Jack's personal sense of responsibility to history.
All the King's Men has two major characters, Willie Stark and Jack Burden. By understanding their circumstances and motivations, you will grasp the ideas about human nature that Robert Penn Warren offers. But unless you also look into the personalities and motivations of the minor characters--those who surround Willie and Jack and insist on making themselves felt--the story will not come alive for you. Life, as Robert Penn Warren shows you, can be a tangled web of relationships among a large cast of characters; it is a continuing experience, in which historical events influence present circumstances.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL THE KING'S MEN: WILLIE STARK
Is Willie Stark the people's messiah or a dangerous dictator, a tragic hero or a smooth-tongued tyrant? Does he deserve to be assassinated? How you answer these questions will, in part, influence the meaning that the novel holds for you. And how you answer may also say as much about you as it says about Willie. Do you prefer to put fictional characters into the neat categories of hero and villain? Or do you prefer to see portrayals of life with a double vision, aware that some people are both good and bad? To understand Willie's character, you need to use your powers of double vision. The internal conflicts of his personality do not readily permit you to pass a quick verdict on his life. You will probably discover that Willie, like many powerful leaders, combines opposing elements, often resorting to foul means to achieve good ends.
Willie Stark is an imaginary character, inspired by an actual historical figure Huey Pierce Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1931 and then a U.S. Senator until his assassination in 1935. Some readers have commented that Willie Stark resembles Huey Long too closely. Without a doubt, Long's political career parallels the career that Robert Penn Warren designs for Willie. Both Long and Willie came from a poor Southern background and, through ambitious perseverance, became lawyers. Both held political office at an early age, and each had an unsuccessful first run for governor. As governors, both were charged with bribery and the misuse of state funds and threatened with impeachment. Nevertheless, each had a lifelong passion to improve the lot of his state's poor. By using blackmail and patronage, they financed roads and hospitals and reworked the state's tax structure in favor of the poor people. Finally, each met his death at the hands of a doctor who had a personal grievance against him.
Warren obviously had Huey Long in mind while constructing his novel. Yet, despite the uncanny similarities between these men, the story of Willie Stark is not merely the story of Huey Long. All the King's Men is not a fictional biography. Rather, Long's public career can be seen as the skeletal outline to which Warren adds flesh and into which he then breathes the life of a dynamic, complex personality who engages the reader's imagination.
In a sense, Willie is every man who rises to power by offering to save the people from their distress and who, during his struggles, becomes corrupted by power. Some, therefore, see him as a stereotype, the character of good intentions who becomes tainted by the system. But you may appreciate Willie, first and foremost, as a human being who has dreams, a family he loves, and passions he yields to, among them a desire for power. Warren doesn't just present a character who functions in a concrete political setting; he shows you a man torn between his visions of an ideal society and stark reality--what it takes in the real world to fulfill one's dreams. Willie's last name gives you a clue to his main way of dealing with power and conflict. He sacrifices his ideals for action. He is a man of stark fact, and he wants results. In the end, Willie reevaluates his life's goals. But it is too late for change. Willie, like his many actual and fictional counterparts, is not given a second chance.
Warren's portrayal of Willie raises the following questions: What psychological toll does the person with a deeply rooted political mission pay? Do the means of accomplishing the mission justify the ends? Can a well-intentioned man who becomes politically corrupt be a hero of the reader's imagination?
^^^^^^^^^^ALL THE KING'S MEN: JACK BURDEN
Jack Burden is the narrator of All the King's Men. He is supposedly telling Willie's story. Yet, you will begin to sense, after reading several chapters, that Jack is using Willie's story as a vehicle for clarifying the meaning of his own life. Warren says that he chose Jack as the narrator because he is one of the empty, powerless people who need a character like Willie to bring them to life. Also, because Jack is intelligent and perceptive, he is the best one to tell Willie's story. But still this does not explain why Jack becomes the central character, the most complex character and the one who undergoes the most changes. Why does Jack dominate the novel? Why is he embedding his own story inside of Willie's? Jack, like most people, is not easy to understand. Nevertheless, by examining several facets of his character, you can glean some insights into his motivations.
In contrast to Willie, who has a well-defined goal--to do good for the poor folk--Jack drifts without direction. He is a keen observer of the meaning that other people give to their lives. For instance, he knows that Willie's wife, Lucy, finds satisfaction in family life, and that Willie's secretary, Sadie, seeks fulfillment by subordinating her talents to the careers of powerful men. But Jack sees no meaning in his own existence. Why does such an intelligent, articulate man lack purpose? Does the cause stem from his childhood, from having been abandoned by his father and then having to compete with a series of stepfathers for his mother's affection? Was he spoiled by the luxuries of his aristocratic upbringing? Is he disillusioned because his love life has not come up to his expectations?
But Jack does have a love life, although, until the novel's end, it is no more than memories and fantasies. He still loves his childhood friend, Anne Stanton. The only goal he ever had, it seems, was to marry Anne. Thus, a second aspect of Jack's character to consider is his deep attachment to Anne. What is it about Anne that causes him to be obsessed with her? Or, looking at it from another angle, what does his memory of her do for him that no real woman can do? His failed marriage to Lois Seager was based on sex, not love. And since his divorce, he has not established any meaningful relationships with women, except perhaps with Lucy Stark. Jack admires Lucy's devotion to her family and her strength of character. But he pays more attention to her appearance than to her personality or character. On each visit to Lucy's farm, he describes in detail her hair, clothing, and furniture.
A third facet of Jack's character, then, is his inability to become emotionally involved--with women, with friends, or with a career. When Jack was in graduate school studying American history, he was on the verge of becoming involved in the life of a man, Cass Mastern, who had died in the Civil War and whose motivations perplexed him. His Ph.D. project was to write a historical account of Mastern. But he walked away from the project and never received his doctorate. As an aide to Willie Stark, he completed an extensive research project--finding a scandalous incident in Judge Irwin's past--and refused to let his friendship for the Judge obstruct his objectivity. "Emotions begone! Truth to the fore!" seemed to be his guiding principle. How could Jack be so detached from his own professional possibilities in graduate school and from his feelings of friendship for the Judge during his research?
Jack, as you'll see, becomes a tireless researcher when he begins to work for Willie; he doesn't let go of a project until he has discovered the truth--regardless of how ugly it may be--of a person's past. As such, a fourth facet to note is his attitude toward history and truth. Jack Burden carries with him the burden of history, and while rejecting his own past, he takes refuge in investigations into the pasts of other people. Nevertheless, he has no more than a dim notion--at least until the end--of why history is important. The technical aspects of historical research fascinate him and, at the same time, help him to avoid confronting his own lack of personal historical consciousness. Why does Jack do Willie's bidding? Why is he interested in the phenomenon of Willie Stark? When does he realize his own vital significance in the flow of history?
Finally, you should consider the question of self-knowledge in trying to understand Jack. Some readers believe that the quest for self-knowledge is subordinate to, and supportive of, all other facets of Jack's character. Such periodic episodes as the "Great Sleep" and the comfort he takes in the mechanistic theory of the "Great Twitch" reveal that Jack is escaping from reality. In a sense, he is a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, who lets the world around him change while he waits and hopes for his life to fall in step with the times. Jack doesn't actively seek self-knowledge. The changes in his attitude, in his willingness to get involved and to accept responsibility, appear to result from events outside of his control. Or do they? Is Jack an active seeker of self-knowledge or a fortunate man who comes by it through no effort of his own?
These, then, are some aspects of Jack to consider while attempting to understand him. Other facets of his character will emerge as the novel unfolds.
The following characters are discussed in order of appearance in All the King's Men.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL THE KING'S MEN: SUGAR-BOY O'SHEEAN
Sugar-Boy, a sugar cube-eating Irishman, is the first character you meet. He is Willie's driver and bodyguard. He can drive a Cadillac with great speed and agility, and he's a deadly accurate target shooter. Beyond that, he stutters, appears to be mentally retarded, and is dominated by one emotion--intense loyalty to Willie.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL THE KING'S MEN: TINY DUFFY
When you first meet Tiny Duffy, he is Willie Stark's lieutenant governor, the second in command of the state. Later you discover that he was one of the men who deceived Willie during Willie's first campaign for governor. Willie, however, wooed Tiny away from another political camp and made Tiny his chief lackey. Tiny has no loyalty to any political faction--he seeks his own selfish interests and will grovel, if that's what it takes, to maintain a position in state government. But Tiny should not be underestimated; he is a dangerous man. So, like Jack, you may wonder why Willie has raised Tiny to such a powerful place in state politics.
^^^^^^^^^^ALL THE KING'S MEN: LUCY STARK
Most of all Lucy, Willie's wife, wants to be a good mother and a good wife. She supports Willie's political ambitions but appears uncomfortable in the role of governor's wife. When she can no longer tolerate seeing what politics has done to Willie and what football stardom has done to their son, she returns to farm life, leaving Willie to his political and sexual intrigues. Yet, she doesn't divorce Willie. Like most other Southern women of her generation, she is devoted to the soil, to the family, and to tradition. But this in itself doesn't explain her loyalty to Willie. She loved him deeply when he was only a county politician. Does she love him later or does she merely love the memory of their good times together?
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |