Theological Reflections on Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men (Critical Essay)

ROBERT PENN WARREN'S novel of southern politics is far more than a political novel. It is a profound meditation on human nature. It is a novel populated by seekers, each with a longing, each with a desire for significance, each struggling to forge meaning in a world in which meaning does not immediately disclose itself. Warren frequently recurs to Christian themes and images to bring into relief the difficulties faced by modern man in a world in which traditional beliefs seem impossible. In what follows, I attempt to point out some of the Christian themes, images, and categories that appear in the novel and show how in many instances these categories are inverted. This discussion will occur as a way of tracing the ideological struggle of the narrator, Jack Burden, who begins as a self-described "brass-bound idealist," but in the course of the novel moves, in a sort of two-tiered conversion, to embracing mechanistic determinism and finally finds a sort of resolution as an a genuine seeker. In the end, Jack's openness to the traditional Christian position reveals that the inversions have been overcome but not without significant personal cost. Jack Burden, the political hatchet man for Governor Willie Stark, seeks to avoid responsibility for his (often unpleasant) actions by convincing himself that "what you don't know don't hurt you, for it ain't real"(30). (1) This "brass-bound Idealism" is a theory Jack learned about in college, and "I had hung on to it for grim death. I owed my success in life to that principle" (30). Jack appears to have embraced a form of Idealism made famous by Bishop Berkeley whose position may be summarized as esse is percipi, or to be is to be perceived. In other words, all existing things exist by virtue of their being perceived. Jack seeks to apply this rather complex metaphysical position to his own comportment with the world and in so doing constricts the world to a single point, to a single knower. That is, "If I, Jack Burden, don't perceive something, then it doesn't exist, at least not as far as I'm concerned." Jack tries to avoid responsibility for his existence in the world by retreating into a form of epistemological solipsism. The obvious difficulty, a difficulty that Jack repeatedly faces, is that his theory is simply unlivable. His actions do affect those around him, and as the novel progresses, the implications of his actions force him to abandon this impossible position.