All the King’s Men is a famous novel by the American author Robert Penn Warren. The novel was published in 1946 and won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Warren set the novel in the Deep South during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The main character is Willie Stark, a self-made politician who closely resembles the powerful political leader Huey Long. Long had been the governor of Louisiana and then a United States senator before being assassinated in 1935.
The story is narrated by Jack Burden, an intellectual young journalist who becomes a member of Stark’s staff. Burden recounts Stark’s political rise from a poor and self-educated young man from the backwoods to the position of the most powerful figure in his state. Stark uses bribery, blackmail, and intimidation to gain and hold political power. However, Stark’s personality is a fascinating mixture of corruption and the desire to serve the people of his state by such means as building roads in rural areas and erecting hospitals. Stark is eventually shot and killed by Adam Stanton, the brother of Anne Stanton, Stark’s mistress.
As he tells Stark’s story, Burden must face the conflict between good and evil in Stark’s career. At the end of the novel, Burden marries Anne Stanton and comes to a new sense of self-awareness.
A motion-picture adaptation of the novel won the 1949 Academy Award as best picture. Broderick Crawford also won an Academy Award as best actor for his performance as Willie Stark.
See also Long ; Warren, Robert Penn .
