By Sydni Dailey
It is clear to see that even from reading only a little bit of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men,” how talented of a writer he is. Although some of his sentences can go on for multiple lines of a page, he definitely has a writing style that––in my opinion––is similar to Steinbeck. I am not quite one third of the way done with the book yet, but the time frame to me so far is very interesting. The book is set in the last 1930’s, which means that the country as a whole was trying to work their way out of the Great Depression. Willie Stark, or commonly referred to as “The Boss” by the narrator, you can tell is a wealthy man from the beginning. Everyone pretty much everywhere Willie and his crew go knows who he is and what he does. Some see him as a celebrity. What I love about Penn choosing to have a narrator’s point of view over Willie’s is the fact that the narrator is close to Willie, but obviously can’t see inside of his head and think what he’s thinking. His opinions of all the characters are unbiased for the most part, which is nice since we don’t know what the characters think of themselves, but rather how a friend sees them. I think this will be a useful way of telling the story later on in the book, especially towards the climax to make sure that most of the main characters opinion’s aren’t shared to sway the story one way or another.
Great American Novels 