All The Kings Men Ch. 8 Blog
As I was finishing up the novel “All the Kings Men”,
I saw several important quotes that helped tie the novel up as a whole. The first quote I would like to discuss is, “I
had often envied people. People I had seen driving along straight furrow across
a black field in April, or Adam Stanton. I had, at moments, envied the people
who seemed to have knowledge” is found on 471. This quote is used to show how
Jack thinks. As a reader we see that Jack is not simply a lazy man, but instead
he is a jealous man. It is not the tangible things he envies, but the facts
that others close to him or that he works for actually have goals they wish to
attain. Even Anne his life-long love sees his lack of true pure ambition.
Though the Work of Willie has been to win over the ignorant country people at
least he had determination and built one good thing, the Willie Stark Hospital.
The fact that he envies people who know their purpose in life shows that he
truly wishes he had one as so this explains his need for a Great Sleep.
Knowledge is power is repeated as well that explains the desperation that we as
a people feel towards needing to be all knowing. The world is seen as a place
where man cannot truly be blamed for their wrong doings because they make it up
as they go along; therefore, “If there was a debt, it was, perhaps due to me,
from me…My only crime was being a man and living in the world of men, and you don’t
have to do special penance for that. That crime and the penance, in that case,
coincide perfectly. They are identical.” (500). This shows that Jack’s character,
like so many people in today’s society, will not acknowledge the fact that they
are wrong in committing any crime; moreover, believing the world has done crimes
against them in how it functions day to day that it is inevitable that man
become corrupt. We as a people owe ourselves a lot because we allow society to
dictate how we operate and have turned us against one another. That is the true
crime. This novel warns against the ideals of collectivism and how easily even
the purest of characters such as Adam can turn into something evil. When we
establish these two ideas of good and bad this novel forces us to then readjust
the definitions we may have gathered in the past. Due to the fact that everyone
in the novel is connected somehow the evil that one man does affects al the
other characters. By the ignorant townspeople praising Willie as a god he
becomes conceited and evil, he poisoned his colleagues and Jack, Jacks change
from innocence to corrupt repels Anne. Anne falls for Willie he seems to be
everything Jack isn’t and this affair is what angers Adam to kill him. All are
affected by politics consciously and unconsciously and that is the downfall of
this town.
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