All the King's Men

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1946

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary

Jack begins digging into Judge Irwin’s past by thinking of what could drive the judge to corruption. He decides that the most likely cause is a need for money, though he cannot remember Judge Irwin ever being broke. He decides to ask Ellis Burden, Irwin’s former friend and Jack’s own father. Jack’s father lives above a Mexican Restaurant, and Jack goes there to wait for him to return. When his father arrives, the bartender gives them bread and they walk upstairs. In his apartment, Jack meets his father’s unfortunate friend, a man whose wife played an acrobatic angel in the circus but fell and died. The man is so traumatized, he only eats chocolate and makes angel sculptures out of chewed bread. Jack bluntly asks his father if Judge Irwin ever needed money because Willie is asking. His father refuses to answer, saying he has left his foul sins in the past.

Jack’s digging continues when he goes home to Burden’s Landing and spends a night with Adam and Anne in their old house. It is just Jack and Anne at first, and he asks her about whether Judge Irwin was ever desperate for money, hoping to surprise an answer out of her. She criticizes his motivations, suggesting that his role in politics is why they are not together romantically. Anne tells him that she recently met with Willie to lobby for funding for the Children’s Home. She goes on to tell Jack that she feels unfulfilled in her life and wishes she for a different career. When Adam arrives, Jack asks the same question and Adam tells him that he remembers a conversation he overheard as a child about Judge Irwin needing money. It was a heated discussion between Irwin and Adam’s father, Governor Stanton.

Days later, Anne calls Jack and tells him that though Judge Irwin did need money, he solved the problem by marrying into money. Jack does not believe it and begins digging deeper, finding it too convenient that Judge Irwin would solve his money issues in such a way. He wants to find Judge Irwin innocent, but finds debts and a mortgage on Irwin’s plantation, though the payments on them appear irregular. Through research, Jack finds Irwin’s second wife, Mabel Carruthers, who died soon after their wedding and is not remembered by anyone in town. He travels to Savannah, Carruthers’s home, and interviews people who knew her, like Mr. Poindexter, who worked at her bank and lent her money. She was also in a poor financial situation, and it appears that both she and Judge Irwin believed they were marrying into money.

This revelation leads Jack to look into Judge Irwin’s time as the attorney general of the state under Governor Stanton. He uncovers a relationship between Judge Irwin and the American Electric Power Company. It appears that Judge Irwin acted favorably toward the Southern Belle Fuel Company, a subsidiary of the American Electric Power Company, in a contract dispute and received shares and a high-paying job as the company’s counsel after the case. Jack also discovers that Mortimer Littlepaugh, the former counsel, died in a fall from a hotel balcony around the same time.

Jack tracks down Littlepaugh’s sister, and after giving her some money, learns from her that Mortimer died by suicide after Governor Stanton dismissed his complaints about Judge Irwin’s corruption. She lied to the insurance company, telling them that the death was an accident, to receive her brother’s life insurance payout. Mortimer’s sister even shows Jack a letter from Mortimer showing his attempts to expose the corruption and the governor’s role in intimidating him. He pays her to make copies of the documents.

Chapter 6 Summary

Jack’s research takes him seven months, and he does not finish until March of 1937. During his research, Tom crashes a car and injures his passenger, a girl. Lucy and Willie fight over what to do with Tom, and Anne gets her money from Willie. Willie begins to work on his plans for his hospital in earnest, traveling to the Northeast to study the best hospitals and administrations in the country. Tiny Duffy begins pressuring Willie to use Gummy Larson as the contractor for the hospital, supposedly to help push MacMurfee into line, though Tiny will likely benefit from the deal. When Tiny tries to sneak Gummy into the mansion, Willie rages at them and kicks them both out.

Willie wants Jack to convince Adam Stanton, the best surgeon in the state, to run the hospital, even though Adam is very vocal in his dislike of Willie. Jack goes to convince Adam and tells him Willie does not want to buy or threaten him, but only wants him because he knows Adam wants to do good and help people. Jack goes to Memphis afterward to meet with Littlepaugh’s sister. When he returns, Anne calls him to set up a meeting to speak. They go for a walk and Anne asks Jack to help her convince Adam to take the job at the hospital. She is worried he does not take care of himself, and she believes that this is a great opportunity for him. She tells Jack that she asked Adam but they had a big fight and he refused the job.

Jack explains that Adam does not want to be involved because he still believes that men in power can be good, citing the example of his own father. Jack tells Anne that the news of Judge Irwin’s corruption will deflate Adam’s idealism. Anne deduces that her father, who was the governor at the time, was also involved. She rages at and runs from Jack, and as he chases her, a police officer stops them and prepares to arrest Jack until he proves that he works for Willie. They get a cab but Anne kicks Jack out before either of them reaches home.

A few days later, Anne asks for the proof of the crime and Jack sends it over. She finds him some days later to return the copies and tells Jack that she showed them to Adam. Adam is upset but it ultimately pushes him to agree to take the hospital job. Anne requests that Jack give Judge Irwin the chance to explain his actions before turning over the information to Willie.

Willie comes to visit Adam after he accepts the position, and Adam is skeptical and critical of him. Willie tells Adam that they have to make goodness out of the badness and that the standards for what is good change constantly. Adam says that he will do his job and not be at all interfered with, and Willie gladly agrees. Jack does not understand how there is such a gap between Willie’s usual politics and his commitment to building the hospital in the right way, with no corruption or extortion. He means to ask why Willie is so opposed to taking the contract from Gummy Larson, but ultimately he forgets.

Jack remembers the speech on the night the impeachment crumbled, years ago, and how Willie spoke of his hopes for the hospital to do good for the people of the state. He remembers Anne, next to him in the crowd, looking in awe at Willie and asking if he truly meant what he said. Jack realizes that Anne knew of Adam’s job offer without him telling her, and he confirms with Adam that he did not tell her. Jack feels confused about how Anne could have known, as it is unlikely of Willie to let gossip out. One morning, Sadie comes into Jack’s office, once again complaining that Willie has another woman. She complains about Jack’s friends the Stanton siblings, and Jack realizes that the other woman must be Anne. He rushes to her apartment in a daze and when he finds her, she just nods.

Chapters 5-6 Analysis

Willie’s surprising integrity in building the hospital makes clear his total investment in The Politics of Perception. Despite using blackmail and extortion at will throughout the novel, he refuses to use the contractor Tiny Duffy wants because of the presumed bribe that accompanies it. When he speaks of the hospital, he speaks of his legacy:

I’m building that place, the best in the country, the best in the world, and a bugger like Tiny is not going to mess with it, and I’m going to call it the Willie Stark Hospital and it will be there a long time after I’m dead and gone and you are dead and gone (233).

This attitude is the key distinction between Willie’s brand of corruption and that of the more conventional politicians around him. Willie’s overriding desire for public adulation can occasionally produce happy outcomes. Where a more conventional politician might hire a shoddy construction company in exchange for kickbacks, Willie wants to build the grandest hospital in the country, one that will serve as his legacy long after he’s gone. He wants it to be a representation of how he presents himself to the people, and therefore it must be seen as a good and clean hospital, not built with dirty money and backroom deals. This attitude is heavily influenced by Anne Stanton and explains why he is suddenly so opposed to Tiny Duffy’s tactics.

Jack continues to serve Willie by pursuing Truth as an Instrument of Power. He considers his search for information related to Judge Irwin as his second great pursuit of truth in his life, following his failed pursuit of the truth about his great uncle Cass Mastern. He uses what he learns to shape the opinions of Anne and Adam, giving them both the facts and the truth and letting them do what they will with them. He hopes that the revelation of Irwin’s questionable ethics will make Adam more open to Willie, by showing that every politician at some point or another conducts shady political practices, but ultimately he must depend on Adam to draw that conclusion:

I had found the truth [...] and had sent that little piece of truth to Adam Stanton. I couldn’t cut the truth to match his ideas. Well, he’d have to make his ideas match the truth. That is what all of us historical researchers believe. The truth shall make you free (260).

Jack does not appear to be aware of the irony in his claims. He includes himself in the group of “us historical researchers,” even though he gave up the formal study of history and his research now consists of digging up material his boss can use to blackmail political opponents. He quotes Jesus’s statement in John 8:32, “The truth shall make you free,” but this is true only if freedom is synonymous with loyalty to Willie. Jack knows that Adam’s idealism cannot withstand the truth. He is confident that the truth will make Adam as cynical as he is, and that cynicism will make him pliable.

The death of Mortimer Littlepaugh shows the harm that The Corrupting Nature of Power can do in the lives of those without power. When Jack visits Littlepaugh’s sister, she explains how Judge Irwin’s corruption and Governor Stanton’s protection of him led her brother to die by suicide:

She looked at me steadily, then broke. ‘He did! He drove him to it, he killed him, he was hired because it was a bribe—my brother knew that, he told them he knew it—but they threw him out—they said he couldn’t prove it, and threw him out’ (225).

The company fired Littlepaugh to give Judge Irwin his job as a part of the bribe, and when Mortimer complained to Governor Stanton and was turned away, he jumped from his hotel balcony. Neither Judge Irwin, Governor Stanton, nor even the American Electric Power Company care how their actions impact Mortimer Littlepaugh. The powerful are concerned with themselves and carry little to no regard for those they use and discard.