Framing my Research Project on AKM

Since so much of Warren’s All the King’s Men focuses on Jack Burden’s relationship to various potential father figures, I think it would be interesting to launch a gender-based/feminist oriented reading of the novel.  Full of self loathing and erasure, Jack Burden, the narrator, has a deeply cynical voice akin to what you’d expect from the noir films at the time.  This capacity seems to relate to the sociological idea that masculinity—as a compulsive performance—has two principal affectations: first, there are outward pantomimes—called “Surface Acting” (Hochschild) where a man displays the proper—in terms of masculinity—emotion appropriate to any given situation; then there is a more profound sense of performance where, over time, men actually bring themselves to feel or block an emotion.  Like Chandler’s Marlow, it takes some inundation into the mind of Jack Burden to understand the negative emotional distance in which he frames the issues and relationships that preoccupy his narrative.  Throughout the book, the Burden’s philosophical universe changes drastically as he tries understand his agency in the world and model his philosophical outlook on the various father figures he has absorbed throughout his life.  Willie Stark, on the other hand, is a creature of will.  This farm-boy turned fascist is self-made—in the American ideal—but emotionally unavailable to any situation or character who cannot contribute to his political power.  Accordingly, it will be interesting to examine in terms of homosociability how Jack Burdern became a henchman of a man he clearly despises.              

Though later cut out for the far superior opening that now exists, the Polk’s “Restored Edition” retains—in the appendix—the original opening of the book where Burden unabashedly refers to Willie (though recognized a dark principal of political power) as a son of a bitch.  Anyway, it will be interesting also to examine the sort of ennui and nihilism that Jack Burden found himself in when he was recruited to Stark’s inner circle of factotums and minions.  Out of work and basically floating through the day in a sort of womanizing, boozy bliss, he gets the call from Stark and says yes without hesitation, despite his initial hostility towards the hapless Stark in his first—futile—run for governor.  Ultimately, it seems Burden, develops a sort of “Reflective Masochism” whereby he brutalizes himself internally for not being intellectually self-sufficient (thus manlike) enough to finish his PhD thesis (which would contain an inherent, comprehensive worldview).  Out of this inward nihilism, Willie Stark, with his indomitable volition and will to power, becomes paternalistically and homosocially attractive.  Thus, it would also be interesting to study how masculinity shapes fascism, both in terms of the “boss” who is clearly a vestige of the old southern stereotype of manliness (self-made, in control, haunting/looming, and worshipped) and this new type of failing masculinity whose only agency comes in loathing the self and its feeble powers to ascertain a viable position in the universe.

Along the way, it seems I must study the formation of Burden’s relationship with Stark (by comparison this paternal relationship will contain all other father figures); Burden’s relationship to Anne Stanton and how she stands apart from his typical womanizing; and, finally, a detailed analysis of Burden’s relationship to his mother.