Applying Lenses

Evaluating preconditions of the Heterodiegetic “I”.  By saying that Jack Burden speaks from a “fallen” perspective, it’s imperative to construct what that previous state may have been.  Very little in All the King’s Men gives us any access to what Burden was like before meeting Willie Stark, but there are some moments, like when he recalls Anne Stanton and her brother swimming in their youth.  In this particular reminiscence, Jack plunges into the moment when he simultaneously realized his love for Anne, yet also his inability to be her man, because he’s not morally assure of himself as Adam.  Oddly, the look intended for Anne, the one full of want, doesn’t stay on her, but then shunts to Adam who recognizes the intent and grows embarrassed by it.  What ensues is a quick comparison between Jack and Adam where Jack realizes he—though as intelligent and capable—lacks the ethical certainty that Adam has.  Accordingly, Jack cannot be Anne’s “man” because he doesn’t have authority over himself.  Moments like this, compared to, say, the time Jack disabuses Willie during his first campaign of his chances at winning and he feels his “heart suddenly go soft and fluid in my chest like a melting snowball you squash in your hand,” (AKM 127) offer many great counterpoints in terms of homo-sociability and language, especially given the nostalgic exactitude—and grace—Jack lends to his memory.  Similarly, Jack, though he feels terrible for being the one to crush Willie (this is the Wille before his Talos like transformation) and his rag to riches aspirations of wealth and power, can only permit himself any tenderness by appropriating it in masculine way.  Notice how he melts, softens, but only by the end of the analogy do we see a fist closing around the snowball.  If this isn’t reflexive masochism made narrative, I don’t know what is.