From "Jack Burden" to "I": The Narrator's Transformation in All the King's Men

Abstract

From John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929) to Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back (1980) and Portrait of a father (1988), Robert Penn Warren framed his career with prose biography and autobiography. In light of the central role of these modes in Warren's writing, All the King's Men emerges as one of Warren's most significant works, because the narrator's development as a historian reflects the overall progression of Warren's narrators. excursions into Stark's and Mastern's lives, and into his own life, represent an emerging knowledge of history that supersedes his sense of disconnection from history. Burden learns that, although events seem divorced from human agency, individuals do act upon history by living and interpreting it. Initially Burden evades this truth through the Great Sleep and his various theories (the Great Twitch, the Theory of Historical Costs, and the Moral Neutrality of History), but he ultimately finds himself in the existential paradox of having chosen to act merely by having chosen not to. As Burden discovers his connection to history, he becomes less detached as a narrator, surrendering his pose of objectivity. He becomes more involved in events, to the point that his biographical narratives of Willie Stark and Cass Mastern become autobiographical. Warren inscribes the paradigm of historical connection into the discourse of first person narrative. While much criticism has noted philosophical development, a less studied facet of the novel is the effect of this development on his narrative style. The grammar of narration (his tone, diction, levels of observation and participation) reflects the historiographical-ethical position that he adopts. As Burden envisions himself connected to history, he places less distance between himself and the story he narrates. Wayne Booth's distinction between and is useful here: Burden becomes more involved with the story he tells, eventually transforming himself from an observer to a participant in the plot. Obviously Burden participates in the story he tells, giving him the involvement of a character with the detachment of a narrator. He is always a narrator-agent rather than a narrator-observer. The problem is his failure to recognize his own agency. Burden initially attempts to evade the fact of his own involvement, and his discourse reflects this failed endeavor. He always participates, but he must progress toward acknowledging his participation and the personal responsibility that accompanies it. The stories of Willie Stark and Cass Mastern come to the reader through an overt narrator, whom James Justus calls an intervening consciousness.(1) Justus considers Burden's as an equivalent of Stark's political manipulation.(2) Indeed, there is much evidence of aesthetic manipulation throughout the novel. For dramatic effect he deliberately withholds certain information (his paternity, the deaths of Judge Irwin and Adam Stanton, his marriage to Anne Stanton) until crucial moments, and he teases his reader with foreshadowings, as in the final sentence of chapter one: the Boss is dead, who said to me, And make it stick. Little Jackie made it stick, all right.(3) Often appearing to relish the position of narrative power, Burden seems very much aware that he controls a narrative, and the reader shares that awareness. Because Burden is such an intrusive, pervasive narrator, we can chart his movement toward historical connection not only through the story he tells but also through his very audible narrating voice. Clues to his ethical development reside in his manipulative and often hyper-intellectualized rhetoric. Early in his experience he attempts to detach himself from history, an effort that his narrator-observer stance reflects. The effort fails. …