AP Lit All the Kings Men Megan Beers

This past week in Ap lit we have been reading the first two chapters of All the Kings Men, throughout my reading I was assigned to look at the themes: Individual versus Society and Good versus Evil. So far in the novel one of the central motifs is that all actions have consequences, and that it is impossible for an individual to stand aloof and be a mere observer of life, as Jack tries to do. Another major occurrence that I also saw was that society defines the individual: in Willies case society has built him up to be their leader when in reality he is merely a puppet that his groupies’ control and his groupies are making him to be defined as desirable to social appeals. For Good versus Evil Warren highlights that no human can live without being tainted by evil.

For society versus the individual Warren makes the individual out to be shallow and brainless. When Willie was in the town not “making his speech” his supporters seemed brainless because they didn’t really care for Willie’s policies but they just wanted to be around “him”.  Warren also defines man as being deceiving and manipulative, which I founded connected the two themes together. Warren shows how society defines what is considered “evil”. Which also bring up that all of man is tainted by evil. Society decides what it means to be evil, generally it is something/someone the cause great harm or deceives people into following them to destruction. So far in the novel Willie hasn’t really caused any harm but he is lead to lead people by manipulating them an example being when he makes his speech, he tells people that he isn’t going to promote himself when in actuality he does.

In these first Willie is introduced in a dramatic fashion; he seems utterly in charge of the situation from start to finish of the trip to Mason City, he has complete control over the crowd he is preaching too and he has a group of underlings whom he directs as he pleases. Willie is presented as a dynamic, forceful personality capable of captivating and overwhelming those around him. As the story progresses it goes back in time to show that Willie wasn’t originally the controlling personality. When Jack first meets Willie he isn’t the dominant personality. He is completely over powered by his friends which they ultimately net out at equaling his “temptations”. Temptations in literary terms usually lead to down falls or demises. In the first chapter. We are also introduced to the wry, descriptive intelligence of Jack Burden, the novel's narrator and the only person in the chapter whom Willie seems to respect. As the novel progresses, we learn a bit about both Jack and Willie's origins: Willie comes from a hardscrabble farm in Mason County where he visits his father; Jack comes from a mansion in aristocratic Burden's Landing, where his mother continues to live. Jack's flashback to his first meeting with Willie at Slade's shows how Willie's effect on people worked even before Willie had power, as he overcomes Tiny Duffy's attempts to make him drink a beer, and instead has an orange soda. It also shows how far Willie has come: in the scene at Slade's, Tiny attempted to bully Willie; now, he is his flattering underlying.