FEATURED ESSAYS 1. Tina Turner 2. Macbeth: Banquo's Soliloquy 3. Thanatopsis: An Analysis 4. Kingdom Of Benin 5. Early Civilizations 6. I Have A Dream 7. Ideals Satirized In Candide 8. Macbeth- Ambition And Hamartea 9. Macbeth's Blind Ambition 10. Mali, One Of The Greatest Afri 11. Beowulf 12. Class Systems In Ancient History: 13. Creative Writing: The Gift Of Wis... 14. St. Gregory Of Tours

All the King's Men: History's Importance

Throughout All the King's Men, history plays an important role in the
motivations and lives of all the characters. History's importance is most
noticeable, not surprisingly, in the story main characters - Willie Stark
and Jack Burden - whose lives focus on and, in some cases, depend upon
history and how they relate themselves to it. While Willie Stark views
history as a tool with which to manipulate people for his own ends, an
attitude resulting in his own destruction, Jack Burden's view of history
changes over time and eventually allows him to accept his relationship to
the past and, therefore, present. Since each man has such a differing view
it is no wonder that history becomes important to each in different ways.
Willie Stark must support his entire empire in a world of enemies and
corruption, to do this he relies on the past to provide him with the
foundation.

"Dirt's a funny thing," the Boss said. "Come to think of it, there ain't a
thing but dirt on this God's green globe except what's under water, and
that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in
the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. God-a-Mighty picked up a
handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington
and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you
do with the dirt."1 In this case, Stark is referring to the past as dirt -
something to be used in many ways. The way he chooses to use it of course
is as blackmail; "Then he would lean suddenly forward, at the man, and say,
not slow and easy now, `God damn you, do you know what I can do to you?'
And he could too. For he had the goods."2 Thus history is important to
Stark as the device by which he maintains power.

Both Stark and Burden use history differently according to the way it
figures into their lives. To Stark, ultimate power being paramount, history
is a thing to be used in the manipulation of others to achieve his own ends.
For example, when Judge Irwin decides to endorse Murphy's candidate for the
senate, rather than Stark's, Stark views it as the perfect occasion for the
manipulation of the judge through blackmail, both directly and indirectly.
When he discovers the reason for Irwin's change in endorsements he plays
along saying, "`Suit yourself, Judge. But you know, there's another way to
play it. Maybe somebody might give Callahan a little shovelful on somebody
else_'"4 When this angle doesn't work, the next thing Stark tries is direct
manipulation of the Judge himself:The Boss said, "Well, Jackie, it looks
like you got a job cut out for you."And I said, "Callahan?"And he said,
"Nope, Irwin." And I said, "I don't reckon you will find anything on
Irwin." And he said, "You find it."5

Stark also manipulates others through their pasts for his own gain,
although this time on a much grander scale, when he quiets the Legislature
which threatens to impeach him. For days Stark speaks around the state to
gain public support; and for nights he speaks around an envelope of
incriminating evidence to gain political support, or rather, subservience.
When finally Stark has achieved his goal he sends Burden to see Lowdan, the
leader of the pack, and "tell him to call to call his dogs off. Not that it
matters whether he does or not, for they've changed their minds."6 Thus we
see how Stark, using the past as a tool, bends people to his will for his
own plans and desires.

Burden, being a more complicated man split between two focuses in his
motivations - his life, and that of Willie Stark - differs his use of
history accordingly. Since Burden is both  a friend and employee of Stark,
he too uses the past as a manipulator for the cause of Stark.

Jack's research produces facts about Judge Irwin's acceptance of a bribe
and about Governor Stanton's complicity in protecting his guilty friend and
political sidekick. Jack first uses these facts to persuade Adam to take
Willie's hospital position. Without meaning to he has also helped persuade
Anne to become Willie's mistress.7 Contrary to when Jack later tries to
apply this blackmail to the Judge directly, in the case of Adam (and
indirectly, Anne) Burden is acting under his own will, rather than orders
from Stark. More importantly, however, Burden uses the past as a basis for
his relation to the world and the values by which he exists in it. The ties
to the past in Jack's value system are unknown at first even to him and as
the truths about many of these images are revealed, he must not only
acknowledge the effect which they had upon his world view - but must also
update his view accordingly to match the truth. When Burden discovers the
affair between Stark and Anne, it shatters his vision of Anne's purity
(only "one of a number of such pictures which form his attitudes towards
the world."8) represented by his image of her "floating in the water_ with
her eyes closed and the violent sky above and the white gull flashing high
over."9 This sudden renovation of Jack's past is such that it forces him !
to slip away from reality and re-evaluate his life; emerging finally with
his theory of the Great Twitch, which leads to another of Burden's uses of
the past: ignorance of responsibility. By using his varying views on
history and his interpretations of them, Jack is able to create "his own
isolated, sheltered, womb-state world."10 In this world, removed as he is
by his philosophy, he remains guiltless of the consequences of his actions;
and indeed fails to even take note of the cause-and-effect relationship
between his actions and the events in his life. By hiding behind the idea
of the Great Twitch "Jack refuses to acknowledge his common humanity; that
is, he acknowledges the presence of ugliness and evil in the universe but
insists on his own separateness and aloofness from them."11 Beyond just
their actual applications of history, Stark and Burden can be compared and
contrasted on a `history' level in may other ways. For instance, both men
treat the difference between what is historical `fact' and what is
historical `truth' very differently. Stark, in his "know-all, use-all
style" of application of history, conveniently fails to distinguish between
what is truth and what is fact. In effect, he treats the facts as the
absolute truth since this is the easiest interpretation to allow him to
justify his use of history as a manipulating object: "`_there ain't a thing
but dirt on this God's green globe_ It all depends on what you do with the
dirt.'"12 Burden, on the other hand, separates fact and truth into two
distinctly different categories, and while the truth will always give you
the facts, the converse is not always true: "I tried to discover the truth
and not the facts. Then, when the truth was not to be discovered, or
discovered could not be understood ! by me, I could not bear to live with
the cold-eyed reproach of the facts."13