I sat outside with All the Kings Men all day and I got caught up on my reading. And I'm glad I did because there were some passages in Chapter 2 that really resonated with me. The transformation from sweet, righteous, naive Willie to politically savvy, at-any-cost Willie that we got to know in Chapter 1 struck me as incredibly sad, the epitome of loss of innocence. Chapter 2 showed us the death of the hopeful, red-necked, honest Willie and the birth of a man who wouldn't grow into a leader, but who was born the Boss and to whom the dead red-neck on the hotel bed was not even a memory but another life.
The transformation was set into motion when Willie challenged Pillsbury on the schoolhouse business. The contrast between Willie's doe-eyed appeal for the proper building company and Pillsbury's under the counter appeal for his friend's irresponsible construction business and Willie's loss of the pitch demonstrates the man's purity in his non-politically driven campaign. At this point he was small and pitiable and ignorant, yet admirable. He was knowledgable in the literal sense, he knew that rotten bricks would cause mayhem in the near future but he was completely ignorant about human nature and how to talk to people. When he embarked on his governor's campaign he became exactly the text-book example of an ideal candidate: informed about the problems of the state, driven to expand the minds of the constituency and to get them involved in the government. He was honest and kind and unselfish.
But the figures didn't mean anything to anybody. What should have been sufficient logos and ethos to win favor struck the constituency as insignificant, boring, unworthy of attention. In this frustrating situation Warren retells the circumstance that has passed by and by in which the people who are the source of power, the masses who dictate the future are dumb-foundingly uninterested in the problems that face their state. Numbers mean nothing. Facts mean nothing. The masses are cattle, lazing in the field chewing cud and gazing half-unseeing at the form before them. What Willie struggles with is that he is a supreme form of human, one who believes in the way things should be and who just can't grasp the reality of the way things are. Scum can dress up in a nice suit, talk sweet and sure in a confident voice, choose his words carefully and even the cleanest folks will fall for him.
It's as if there is this unspoken rule, this silent and universal understanding of how the world really works. Laws, rules, morals, standards are just there for show, there for looks, for kicks. The world moves behind those laws, between the morals and that's just the way things are. Jack knows that "people don't listen when your voice is low and patient and you stop them in the street to do arithmetic" (91). He and Sadie and everyone else seems to understand that people aren't really alive and you have to tell them what they want to hear to make them feel like they're living again, even if they're not (108). And Willie started to learn it earlier, when he broke his back bending over law books for hours and hours into the night to pass his bar exam. When he put all his faith and passion and energy into learning law and then sat down at the bar exam took a look at the test and all they asked him was crappy questions.
And he realizes eventually that you put in so much work and effort and you think you're doing the right thing, the thing that everyone is doing because it is the right thing, and then all along you've been fooled thinking that those same ideas apply to all people when really people all have the silent universal understanding that rules are words and effort is for rules and hard work is for standards and honesty is for morals and none of that really exists. All along people've been cheating and lying and slacking and stealing and making more than ends meat while you've been honest and good and clean and all you get to be is the sacrificial goat. You live for these rules and maybe you're just living for yourself, maybe you're just proud and stuck on the abstract idea of dignity.
The Boss knows that now that he is the Boss. But Willie didn't know that. And finding it out, that his campaign was a ploy, that his effort was worthless, absolutely killed Willie, in nearly every sense of the word. And if Jack knew it before Willie, then maybe Jack had died too, or is dead now and he just never got to be born again like Willie Stark.
For the people who get to see both sides, the side of believing in good and the side of knowing there is none, they are the ones who feel the pain of knowledge. They're the ones who die and know they're dead.
"You don't dream in that kind of sleep but you are aware of every minute of it." That sounds like waking death to me.
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