A great book needs to have interesting characters, as well as ones that the reader can relate to. Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men is one such book. It is the story of Jack Burden. Jack is a newspaper reporter for the Chronicle. Starting as a beat reporter on Willie Stark’s political endeavors, he develops into one of Willie’s staff members and close friends. Through Jack we get the story of Willie’s rise and fall as politician, from country boy to corrupt man. However, what takes the book to another level, is the fact that Jack Burden is Ben Couch.
Let’s break things down.
The cynicism. It’s Jack’s shield from the world. He’s so confident in it that he declares, “nothing ever happened to Jack Burden, who was invulnerable.” (Warren: 159) He hides behind it to prevent himself from feeling. He hangs with a corrupt bunch: Sadie Burke, who never met a powerful man whose heart she couldn’t sleep her way into; Tiny Duffy, set for life, but always scheming for his own benefit; and the good ol’ boy, Willie Stark, the master of the unsigned resignation and womanizer extraordinaire. Jack romps around blackmailing people with a clean conscience. In his “coercion” of one Mr. Lowdan, Jack states, “I don’t know why anybody signed the statement, but if what you charge should happen to be true, then the moral strikes me as this: Mac Murfee ought not to elect legislators who can be bribed or who have done things they can get blackmailed with.” (Warren: 149) He likes to call it “pressuring” though, because, as he tells Judge Irwin, it’s “a prettier word”. (Warren: 346)
However, extreme events lead to cracks in Jack’s protective shell. We see this happen is when Jack learns Anne Stanton is sleeping with Willie. Jack, upon receiving confirmation from Anne (“I didn’t say anything… and she slowly nodded.” (Warren: 269)), is nearly traumatized. He jumps in his car and takes a quick trip, oh say, about cross-country. He takes a break in Long Beach, California. He then heads back and while driving, relives his entire relationship with Anne, and a goodly portion of his life that had only been previously touched on (his relationship with Lois). The emotions pour out of Jack in waves. He tells us of when he realized he was in love by saying, “All the bright days by the water with the gulls flashing high were Anne Stanton. But I didn’t know it… Then there came a time when the nights were Anne Stanton.” (Warren: 273) Jack lets us into the indecisiveness of the potential lover when he sits in the car with Anne, and he struggles with the decision to make a move- “It would be perfectly easy to reach over and take her hand and get started and see where we wound up. For I was thinking in language like that, the stale impersonal language of the College Boy who thinks he’s such a Goddamned big man. But I didn’t reach over.” (Warren: 275) A later fight with Anne leaves him a self-admitted “nervous wreck.” (Warren: 299) For Jack, these candid moments are rare windows into the soft heart of a cynic.
Ben used the cynicism to shield himself as well. He had to. He learned the way sophomore year of high school. Freshman year, he had gone out with a girl who was a bit of a jock (best soccer player in the city, actually). By sophomore year, his football teammates had found out. And they didn’t let him forget it. Heckled into near meltdown, Ben quickly became the team joke. “On the bus after practice, it would get real quiet, from conversations winding down at the same time the way they do- and then the chants would start. They would lean over my seat and search my face for a reaction. I would cringe under the bright spotlights of their glares.” (Couch 73) He cared at first, but that only encouraged them. Not feeling made the catcalls slow to a trickle, and then drip dry. There was nothing by junior year.
It changed him. He no longer cared what people thought, because he made himself numb. Schoolwork slid a bit, as the social life went up. He flirted like mad, chilled with new people; just hung around. But he stayed on the sidelines when it came down to serious action. The best way to not get hurt is to not involve yourself. He’d stay home when friends went to parties and drop out of conversations when they got meaningful.
A renewed relationship with his ex in the beginning of junior year turned things around. A girl caused sleepless nights for the first time in over a year. “I stayed up late, thinking, pondering, fantasizing- everything was perfect. She was the one. Everything was right. So much so that I let myself go. With her anyway. Things were so perfect, I didn’t ask her out. I shouldn’t have needed to.” (Couch 137) When she said no, Ben turned turned into a gelatinous mass of emotions, rebounding twice in a row after that. He was never able to unhook himself from the claws of those three failed relationships.
The girl trouble. Jack’s aforementioned relationship with Anne is one that eerily parallels one Ben had with a girl named Alison. Jack was 21 at the time, Anne was 17. Ben and Alison were 16. Jack had known Anne since childhood. Alison was about as minimal an acquaintance Ben could have had. Jack and Anne’s relationship changed when Anne’s brother, Adam, dropped out of plans to go a movie. Ben and Alison started off by passing notes in physics. Jack and Anne stopped on the way home and looked at the “moonlight on the bay beyond Hardin Point.” (Warren 275) Adam was struggling with whether to make a move and said, “Anne-” without having anything else to say. “She lifted a finger to her lip and said, ‘Sh, sh!’” (Warren 275) and they shared a moment. Ben and Alison hung out one day, when there was a free period in band, and Ali ended up telling him this whole convoluted story about an ex-boyfriend. He made steady eye contact while she spoke, and when she finished, “She looked up, green eyes flashing bright in the harsh light of the band room, and took his hand. Her hands were cream-colored, like milk chocolate when it gets all melty. The nails were coated in clear polish, an unseen protector of beauty. Trimmed to perfection, the white contrasted her skin in a way that made her more perfect.” (Couch 152) They shared a moment.
Jack and Anne’s relationship progressed steadily, and Jack used to while away the time watching Anne move. When she was playing tennis- “…it is too bad the Greeks didn’t play tennis, for if they had played tennis they would have put Anne Stanton on a vase.” (Warren: 274) Watching her make dive after dive from the tower at the local pool. He was more than entranced. “I don’t know how many dives she made, but it was a lot. I drowsily watched them, watched her climb up, very slow, rung by rung, the moonlight on the wet fabric of the dark bathing suit making it look like metal, or lacquer, watched her poise at the verge, lift her arms out to the tingling extreme…” (Warren: 288) Ben used to watch Alison at dance practice after school. She was so fluid and graceful that at the performance “[he] shut out everything and she was dancing alone on stage. Her body ran through the practiced motions almost mindlessly, and her eyes locked on [his] the entire time.” (Couch 180)
Performance anxiety caught up to both of them in the end. Jack, when presented with the chance to “go the limit” with Anne, simply can’t. He feels the need to justify this, and all he can say is, “We oughtn’t, we oughtn’t - it wouldn’t - it wouldn’t be - it wouldn’t be right.” (Warren: 295) and “couldn’t any more have touched her then than if she had been my little sister.” (Warren: 296) Ben and Alison had fooled around, but nothing had been officially consummated. Ben was walking to lunch one day, when Ali snuck up behind him and jumped on his back. He steadied himself, and then shifted her to the front. “Her legs were wrapped around my hips, slender muscles taught, keeping her suspended. Her giggling parted the air like Moses did the sea. I couldn’t help but laugh. She nuzzled into my chest, silken hair coursing over my body. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and her mood shifted. She gazed into my eyes, and I hers. Her eyes kept going past the surface, pools of green I fell into and couldn’t rise out of.” (Couch 169) A friend walked by and said, “Hey.” That’ll get you in the end.
Jack and Anne’s relationship was no longer the same. The two of them didn’t keep close contact for years. Jack later got married to someone else (Lois). Ben and Ali stopped talking to each other. Each was invisible to the other in the halls. Alison had a new boyfriend three weeks later.
The lack of real friends. Both Ben and Jack knew quite a few people without really knowing anyone. People knew Jack even though he had no real position. “’You ever hear of Jack Burden,’ [Jack] asked [a cop on the street], ‘that newspaper fellow who is a sort of secretary to Willie [Stark]?’ He reflected a moment… “Yeah.” (Warren: 250) Ben fit the bill in high school. He wasn’t attached to any one clique, but knew at least a few somebodies in all of them. “I floated from group to group, drifting without ever running ashore. I would be greeted with a “Sup Couch?” every few steps during passing.” (Couch 17) He could count the number of people that knew him on one hand. And two of those didn’t count because they had known him from Kindergarten. Same thing with Jack. Anne and Adam Stanton were the kids he grew up with. Jack’s one true new friend is Willie, and even he doesn’t get all of Jack. On his deathbed, Willie asks to see Jack. Jack doesn’t really say anything, only responding to Willie. “I waited, but it began to seem that he wasn’t going to say any more. His eyes were on the ceiling and I could scarcely tell that he was breathing. Finally, the eyes turned toward me again, very slowly, and I almost thought that I could hear the tiny painful creak of the balls in their sockets. But the light flickered up again. He said, ‘It might have all been different, Jack.’ I nodded again.” (Warren 400) Ben had a new true friend each year. Greg as a freshman, Gabe as a sophomore, Rich and Chris (twins) as a junior, and James as a senior. Each one got to know a different aspect of him. “Freshman year was about adjustment. Still getting used to not being in junior high and meeting people and finding a niche. Sophomore year was hell for me. Gabe stabilized things towards the end. He got the self-conscious, unconfident me. Rich and Chris started to bring the fun back. They got all the girl stories and the everyday craziness. James was the big winner. The cynical, I don’t give a fuck, this is all about chillin’ guy from senior year. It’s all well and good.” (Couch 193)
Interesting, well-developed characters are fun to read about. Jack Burden and Ben Couch are each their own man, but share a bond in so many ways, one can’t help but realize they are truly one and the same. If relating characters is what makes a great book, All the King’s Men has gone far and beyond.
Works Cited
Couch, Benjamin J. Shampoo and Conditioner: Lather, Rinse, and Repeat. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King’s Men. New York: Harvest Books, 1946.