James Baquet

    It’s on two lists of “The Best 100 Novels of the 20th Century.” It won a Pulitzer Prize when it was first published. It has been filmed twice, in 1949 and 2006, and the first version won the Academy Award for best picture. Yet many of us have never heard of it.

    Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” tells the story of Willie Stark, often called simply “the Boss,” a small-time politician in the American South who gains — and abuses — power. He is the “King” of the title (which refers to the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty”).

    But note that the title focuses not on the King but on “All [His] Men.” The story is more about the people who cooperate with the Boss as well as his opponents.

    First among these is Jack Burden, a newspaperman who becomes personal aide to the Boss. He narrates the story, so we get a journalistic perspective on Willie Stark’s actions.

    In the introduction to a later edition of the book, the author denied that the book was meant to be about politics. Warren, by the way, also won two Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, and twice — in the 1940s and again in the 1980s — filled the post of Poet Laureate of the United States.

    What, then? “Politics,” he wrote, “merely provided the framework story in which the deeper concerns, whatever their final significance, might work themselves out.” These “deeper concerns” include the idea that our actions have consequences; that life requires our involvement (we cannot just watch from the sidelines); and that all human beings have a dark side (described in religion as “original sin”).

    But one of the novel’s most interesting and central ideas is that of “The Great Twitch.” Burden, the narrator, comes to believe that we are all subject to thoughtless reactions, represented by a minor character in the book whose nervous tic causes his face to twitch involuntarily; or like a frog’s leg when electricity is applied.

    Subsequent events, however, cause Burden to reverse his thinking, and believe that he and those around him are responsible for their actions. They cannot simply blame impulse.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. outline, structure

    2. assistant, person who helps

    3. an automatic motion of a muscle

    4. official poet of a city, country, etc.

    5. point of view

    6. objective, like a newspaper reporter

    7. a sudden jerking move

    8. action without thought

    9. Christian idea that all people are “born bad”

    10. without intention