The Burden of History

For a project in my American Literature class as a junior in high school, I don't know why the first book I picked up to peruse was Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. The paperback version that I looked at was over 400 dense pages. I was a slow reader and there were plenty of other, much shorter, novels to choose from. After the first few pages the poetic language hooked me; by the end, the book had changed my life.

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the story of Populist Southern Governor Willie Stark. Willie rises to fame and power through promising reform to the unnamed state's poor farmers. Willie's ascend is told to us through the narration of Jack Burden, a disgruntled history student who works for Willie by digging up dirt on Willie's enemies.

The opening scene that captivated me is set in Willie Stark's big, black Cadillac. Willie's driver, bodyguard and errand boy "Sugar Boy" is driving Willie, Willie's wife Lucy and son Tommy, the Lieutenant Governor Tiny Duffy and Jack to a rural town so that Willie can pose for a photo-op. Sugar Boy drives like a maniac and Willie loves it. When Sugar Boy overtakes a hay wagon in the face of an oncoming gasoline truck, he cuts the car "through the rapidly diminishing aperture close enough to give the truck driver heart-failure with one rear fender and wipe the snot off a mule's nose with the other." I remember sitting back and laughing at the humor while marveling at the clarity of the image, an image that is still fresh in my mind after all these years.

While it was the poetic language of the novel that first drew me in, the themes of the book quickly made it my favorite novel. It was the right time in my life to absorb the book's message. At 16, I was just starting to really think about myself as an individual and all the parts that made me who I was. It is an acquired skill to recognize the role of history, social pressure, endowments, weaknesses and desires in shaping every person uniquely. I was just beginning to understand how big a world there was (and still is) out there and the how the consequences of history shape human interaction.

The narrator Jack, though a failed student of history, understands the weight of the past and uses history's pressure for his boss's gain. He begins to feel that man is not in control of his own actions, let alone his own destiny. His string of past failures taints his view of the present and future. The role of power, and the oft-sited corruption of absolute power, plays out in the Machiavellian actions of Willie Stark. History's power, the weapon Jack wields against Willie's enemies, is life shattering. When Jack begins to hurt those closest to him in his efforts to do Willie's bidding, I asked myself what would make me want to turn on those I loved. At the time, I couldn't imagine life's burdens causing me to hurt my friends and family.

I remember feeling, actually feeling, deeply for the characters in All the King's Men more so than I'd ever felt for the characters in a novel before. The corruption of Willie, his unabashed drive for more power, the resignation of Jack Burden, and the weight of history on the lives of the novel's other characters resonated with my uncertain teenage soul. I questioned whether I was who I was because of my heritage or whether I was who I was because of my own innate faculties. I discovered, like the characters in Warren's novel, that both explanations are correct.

At a time in my life, when the first serious notions of individuality and uniqueness were beginning to bounce around in my head, All the King's Men helped me to understand how to start seriously thinking about who I was. Jack Burden's pessimism, his ability to turn away those he loves with the weapon of history and his transformation from a believer in the random, uncontrolled nature of life really spoke to me. His epiphany at the novel's end was an epiphany I could share in; the world made a little more sense. I won't tell you what Jack realizes because it is the kind of epiphany that you have after a long, thoughtful journey. Picking up this life-changing book is the first step on that journey.