All the King's Men

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1946

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Hospital

The hospital that Willie wants to build is a symbol that represents his desire to triumph over the establishment politicians who tried to use his political career for their own benefit. Willie considers himself a man of the people and a different politician from many of the ones who came before him. While others focus on the cities and represent elitism, Willie is from the country and considers himself to be an ordinary man. He resents being used early in his career to steal votes from MacMurfee and commits to helping the people. He believes that he can do so by building a gigantic hospital, the best in the country, and letting anyone who needs it use it. However, his emphasis on its grandeur hints at his greed and need for revenge: “Boy, I tell you, I’m going to have a cage of canaries in every room that can sing Italian grand opera and there ain’t going to be a nurse who hasn’t won a beauty contest at Atlantic City and ever bedpan will be eighteen-carat gold” (139). Willie wants the hospital to be impressive not only in its everyday application for the people of the state but also in its appearance. He is indulgent in his vision of the hospital, needing it to be perfect. He wants it to be fancy to not only prove that he can accomplish this great feat but also so that best the elite class of politicians at their own game. He wants to accomplish this goal and leave a legacy that proves he is better than any of his competitors.

Willie’s Picture

The huge picture of Willie that Jack sees in the pharmacy at the beginning of the novel is a motif that represents Willie’s populist personality cult and symbolizes The Politics of Perception. The picture illustrates his popularity among rural voters—a popularity built more on their identification with him as a person than on any specific policies or positions. The caption especially illustrates how Willie understands himself as a politician: “Under the picture was a legend: My study is the heart of the people. In quotation marks, and signed, Willie Stark. I had seen that picture a thousand places, pool halls to palaces” (6). The quote and picture work in tandem to convince people of a deep emotional bond between Willie and the people of his state, even though, behind the doors of the Capitol, Willie often makes political choices that may work against their interests. Regardless, Willie wishes to be seen as different from many of the politicians that come before him, and by aligning himself most closely with the rural population, he becomes as ubiquitous a part of rural life as the picture itself is.

The Political Cartoon

Political cartoons are used to satirize and criticize politicians and political situations, and the use of one in the novel stands as a motif that helps illustrate The Corrupting Nature of Power. In this particular cartoon, Willie is portrayed as comically enormous, with a pudding on his knee, out of which he has just extracted a small being: “The pudding bore the label The State and the squirming little creature the label Hardworking Citizen” (393). The artist portrays the state as dessert, or something to be indulged in. Willie removes the hardworking citizen from that pudding, denying it that treat. It is then implied that Willie intends to indulge in the pudding himself: “From the mouth of the Boss’s head came one of those balloons of words the comic-strip artists use to indicate the speech of their characters. It said: ‘Oh, what a good boy I am!’ Under the cartoon was the caption: Little Jack Horner” (393). Little Jack Horner is a character in a nursery rhyme who indulges in pie at the expense of others, exhibiting greed and a lack of self-control. The cartoon showing Willie as large and associating him with Little Jack Horner shows how people believe that Willie has grown too accustomed to profiting from the state through bribes and graft, at the expense of everyday people. It makes a point that his greed grows too big, and that he will put himself over the people he serves.