He is best known for his novel "All the King's Men," which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947. For a book that deserves several readings, this Cliff's Notes guide will help your first comprehension become clearer, faster. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is a political novel that delves into the story of Willie Stark, a charismatic politician who rises to power in the face of corruption and moral dilemmas.

But this one is wonderfully written and just what I hoped to find when I started the GAN Quest all those years ago.Cass's story, as revealed through his journals and letters, is essentially about a single betrayal of a friend that seems to ripple endlessly outward with negative consequences for many people. The great Gothic plot turn of the book has Jack Burden unearthing a secret in the past of Judge Irwin, his mentor and guardian.

Had Warren ever questioned this primitive political scheme, he might have confronted Burden with a less melodramatic moral dilemma.

Warren's novel serves as a poignant reflection on human integrity and the haunting question of individual responsibility in a corrupt society.

Their stories reinforce one another, but they also clash and set up reverberations that echo throughout the novel, thus enhancing the thematic richness and depth of the novel. In his lifetime he won three Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the National Medal for Literature, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Like the corrupt governor Willie Stark,” begin dozens of thumb-sucking op-eds, “President Clinton has …”) All the King’s Men, in other words, is the favorite novel of those for whom novel-reading is the 26th or 27th most important thing in the world. And once you’ve used and abused everyone, including your family, who is there left that you can trust?

Upon re-reading two of these key symbols of corruption I noticed was alcohol and sexuality, ever-present in showcasing Willie’s seduction by power. For all of Warren’s flaunted cynicism about politics, at his core he thrills to a Progressive/Populist vision of politics as a struggle of “the people versus the interests. The one great good deed that he intends to atone for everything, a free hospital for the poor, becomes the occasion for some of the worst actions in the book: bribery, blackmail, and ultimately Stark’s own assassination.

Truly a brilliant book which, although it has a lot to say about the political system, isn’t fundamentally about politics. In real life I think we expect far too much of our politicians – not just to do a great job but to be total saints while they do it. Anne is Jack Burden's childhood sweetheart and the daughter of Willie Stark's political predecessor, Governor Stanton.This is particularly demonstrated in a tense dinner scene where Jack defends The Boss’ methods, claiming if state government ‘….