All the King's Men Essay | Critical Essay #4

All the King's Men Critical Essay #4

The fleshing out of Burden was from the start, as Warren himself has pointed out, a technical choice. The novel fairly cried out for a more sensitive consciousness than that of the politician whose story had to be told. Call him Ishmael or Carraway, Burden is another in a long line of American narrators who by dint of their special positions in the stories they tell end by telling their own stories as well. The case of Willie Stark readily invited naturalistic treatment, but the "impingement of that material. . . upon a special temperament" allowed Warren "another perspective than the reportorial one," and it also provided the basis for "some range of style." Both author and narrator finally agree that the story of Willie Stark is also the story of Jack Burden.

Almost alone among the earliest critics, however, Norton Girault was able to see the focus of...
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