Annabelle Trice -- Cass Mastern's lover, the wife of Duncan Trice.
When the slave Phebe brings her Duncan's wedding ring following his
suicide, Annabelle says that she cannot bear the way Phebe looked at her,
and sells her.
Duncan Trice -- Cass Mastern's hedonistic friend in Lexington,
Annabelle Trice's husband. When he learns that Cass has had an afiair with
Annabelle, Duncan takes off his wedding ring and shoots himself.
Phebe -- The slave who brings Annabelle Trice her husband's wedding
ring following his suicide. As a result, Annabelle sells her.
Summary
All the King's Men is the story of the rise and fall of a political titan
in the Deep South during the 1930s. Willie Stark rises from hardscrabble
poverty to become governor of his state and its most powerful political
figure; he blackmails and bullies his enemies into submission, and
institutes a radical series of liberal reforms designed to tax the rich and
ease the burden of the state's poor farmers. He is beset with enemies--most
notably Sam MacMurfee, a defeated former governor who constantly searches
for ways to undermine Willie's power--and surrounded by a rough mix of
political allies and hired thugs, from the bodyguard Sugar-Boy O'Sheean to
the fat, obsequious Tiny Dufiy.
All the King's Men is also the story of Jack Burden, the scion of one
of the state's aristocratic dynasties, who turns his back on his genteel
upbringing and becomes Willie Stark's right-hand man. Jack uses his
considerable talents as a historical researcher to dig up the unpleasant
secrets of Willie's enemies, which are then used for purposes of blackmail.
Cynical and lacking in ambition, Jack has walked away from many of his past
interests--he left his dissertation in American History unfinished, and
never managed to marry his first love, Anne Stanton, the daughter of a
former governor of the state.
When Willie asks Jack to look for skeletons in the closet of Judge
Irwin, a father figure from Jack's childhood, Jack is forced to confront
his ideas concerning consequence, responsibility, and motivation. He
discovers that Judge Irwin accepted a bribe, and that Governor Stanton
covered it up; the resulting blackmail attempt leads to Judge Irwin's
suicide. It also leads to Adam Stanton's decision to accept the position of
director of the new hospital Willie is building, and leads Anne to begin an
afiair with Willie.
When Adam learns of the afiair, he murders Willie in a rage, and Jack
leaves politics forever. Willie's death and the circumstances in which it
occurs force Jack to rethink his desperate belief that no individual can
ever be responsible for the consequences of any action within the chaos and
tumult of history and time. Jack marries Anne Stanton and begins working on
a book about Cass Mastern, the man whose papers he had once tried to use as
the source for his failed dissertation in American History.
Chapter 1
Summary
Jack Burden describes driving down Highway 58 with his boss, Governor
Willie Stark, in the Boss's big black Cadillac--Sugar-Boy is driving, and
in the car with them were the Boss's wife Lucy, son Tommy, and the
Lieutenant Governor, Tiny Dufiy. Sugar-Boy drives them into Mason City,
where Willie is going to pose for a press photo with his father, who lives
on a nearby farm. The Cadillac is followed by a car full of press men and
photographers, overseen by Willie's secretary, Sadie Burke. It is summer,
1936, and scorching hot outside.
In Mason City, Willie immediately attracts an adoring throng of
people. The group goes inside the drugstore, where Doc pours them glasses
of Coke. The crowd pressures Willie for a speech, but he declines, saying
he's just come to see his "pappy". He then delivers an efiective impromptu
speech on the theme of not delivering a speech, saying he doesn't have to
stump for votes on his day off. The crowd applauds, and the group drives
out to the Stark farm.
On the way, Jack remembers his first meeting with Willie, in 1922,
when Jack was a reporter for the Chronicle and Willie was only the County
Treasurer of Mason County. Jack had gone to the back room of Slade's pool
hall to get some information from deputy-sherifi Alex Michel and Tiny Dufiy
(then the Tax Assessor, and an ally of then-Governor Harrison). While he
was there, Dufiy tried to bully Willie into drinking a beer, which Willie
claimed not to want, instead ordering an orange soda. Dufiy ordered Slade
to bring Willie a beer, and Slade said that he only served alcohol to men
who wanted to drink it. He brought Willie the orange soda. When Prohibition
was repealed after Willie's rise to power, Slade was one of the first men
to get a liquor license; he got a lease at an exceptional location, and was
now a rich man.
At the farm, Willie and Lucy pose for a picture with spindly Old Man
Stark and his dog. Then the photographers have Willie pose for a picture in
his old bedroom, which still contains all his schoolbooks. Toward sunset,
Sugar-Boy is out shooting cans with his .38 special, and Jack goes outside
for a drink from his ask and a look at the sunset. As he leans against the
fence, Willie approaches him and asks for a drink. Then Sadie Burke runs up
to them with a piece of news, which she reveals only after Willie stops
teasing her: Judge Irwin has just endorsed Callahan, a Senate candidate
running against Willie's man, Masters.
After dinner at the Stark farm, Willie announces that he, Jack, and Sugar-
Boy will be going for a drive. He orders Sugar-Boy to drive the Cadillac to
Burden's Landing, more than a hundred miles away. Jack grew up in Burden's
Landing, which was named for his ancestors, and he complains about the long
drive this late at night. As they approach Jack's old house, he thinks
about his mother lying inside with Theodore Murrell--not Jack's first
stepfather. And he thinks about Anne and Adam Stanton, who lived nearby and
used to play with him as a child. He also thinks about Judge Irwin, who
lives near the Stanton and Burden places, and who was a father figure to
Jack after his own father left. Jack tells Willie that Judge Irwin won't
scare easily, and inwardly hopes that what he says is true.
The three men arrive at Judge Irwin's, where Willie speaks insouciantly and
insolently to the gentlemanly old judge. Judge Irwin insults Jack for being
employed by such a man, and tells Willie that he endorsed Callahan because
of some damning information he had been given about Masters. Willie says
that it would be possible to find dirt on anyone, and advises the judge to
retract his endorsement, lest some dirt should turn up on him. He heavily
implies that Judge Irwin would lose his position as a judge. Judge Irwin
angrily throws the men out of his house, and on the drive back to Mason
City, Willie orders Jack to find some dirt on the judge, and to "make it
stick."
Writing in 1939, three years after that scene, Jack re ects that Masters--
who did get elected to the Senate--is now dead, and Adam Stanton is dead,
and Judge Irwin is dead, and Willie himself is dead: Willie, who told Jack
to find some dirt on Judge Irwin and make it stick. And Jack remembers:
"Little Jackie made it stick, all right."
Chapter 2 Summary
Jack Burden remembers the years during which Willie Stark rose to power.
While Willie was Mason County Treasurer, he became embroiled in a
controversy over the building contract for the new school. The head of the
city council awarded the contract to the business partner of one of his
relatives, no doubt receiving a healthy kickback for doing so. The
political machine attempted to run this contract over Willie, but Willie
insisted that the contract be awarded to the lowest bidder. The local big-
shots responded by spreading the story that the lowest bidder would import
black labor to construct the building, and, Mason County being redneck
country, the people sided against Willie, who was trounced in the next
election. Jack Burden covered all this in the Chronicle, which sided with
Willie.
After he was beaten out of offce, Willie worked on his father's farm, hit
the law books at night, and eventually passed the state bar exam. He set up
his own law practice. Then one day during a fire drill at the new school, a
fire escape collapsed due to faulty construction and three students died.
At the funeral, one of the bereaved fathers stood by Willie and cried aloud
that he had been punished for voting against an honest man. After that,
Willie was a local hero. During the next gubernatorial election, in which
Harrison ran against MacMurfee, the vote was pretty evenly divided between
city-dwellers, who supported Harrison, and country folk, who supported
MacMurfee. The Harrison camp decided to split the MacMurfee vote by
secretly setting up another candidate who could draw some of MacMurfee's
support in the country. They settled on Willie. One day Harrison's man,
Tiny Dufiy, visited Willie in Mason City and convinced him that he was
God's choice to run for governor.
Willie wanted the offce desperately, and so he believed him.Willie stumped
the state, and Jack Burden covered his campaign for the Chronicle. Willie
was a terrible candidate. His speeches were full of facts and figures; he
never stirred the emotions of the crowd. Eventually Sadie Burke, who was
with the Harrison camp and followed Willie's campaign, revealed to Willie
that he had been set up. Enraged, Willie gulped down a whole bottle of
whiskey and passed out in Jack Burden's room. The next day, he struggled to
make it to his campaign barbecue in the city of Upton. To help Willie
overcome his hangover, Jack had to fill him full of whiskey again. At the
barbecue, the furious, drunken Willie gave the crowd a fire-and-brimstone
speech in which he declared that he had been set up, that he was just a
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