Jack Burden, the chronicler and one of two possible protagonists of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, is anything but a static narrator. His character is quite possibly even more dynamic than that of Willie Stark, the novel's man of the...

In Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, three major characters, Jack Burden, Willie Stark and Adam Stanton, embark on a whirlwind journey of self-discovery that leads to tragedy for some and optimistic enlightenment for others. Throughout the...

In All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, the theme of the power of knowledge is prominent throughout Jack's journey within the great web of the world. His path brings to light his true self and along with it the realization that he and...

Our society revolves around the question of what is good and what is evil. We usually characterize humans as essentially malevolent or benevolent. The world contains, however, a minority of people characterized by ambiguity, a unique emotional...

In Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, the narrator, Jack Burden, is a fictionalized version of Warren himself. Jack expresses Warren's views, which are initially nihilistic, cynical, and escapist. He attempts to distance himself from any...

Jack Burden is far more than a narrator describing the rise and fall of Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Intertwined in his description of The Boss’s political machinations and personal dilemmas is an account of his own...

The three main female characters of All the King’s Men, while standing as their own personal individuals, also serve to show the best and worst aspects of all the main male characters that present throughout the novel. While Anne Stanton and Lucy...

“Evening Hawk” by Robert Penn Warren is, despite its name, not about a hawk. It is about time, the ineffable qualities of that which is past, and the ways in which light and darkness relate with time. And skirting above all of this flies the hawk,...

In the classic short story “Blackberry Winter” by Robert Penn Warren, Seth, the main character, observes the differences between a normal June and a so-called blackberry winter. Each observation of these differences helps Seth, and the reader,...