Power can
transform and shape the way a person lives and is treated. Willie Talos was
once was a lowly farm boy, but his sense of determination allows him to rise to
a position of political power. Those who treated Willy with harshness and victimization
are now expected to respect Willie as a superior. One such bully was Duffy the
bartender, who once tried to pressure Willie into having a drink. Ten years
later, the tables are turned when Willie asks about matters of politics. “…if
you had picked the wax out of your ears you’d heard me tell Jack to prime the
lawyer through a pal and to get one didn’t want his name in lights…Is all that
clear or do you want me to draw a picture?” (32). Through a subtly derogatory
tone, Willie reversed the roles they had previously known. He does so in a much
more refined fashion than Duffy had in the past, allowing for less
confrontation. Due to this altered position of power, Willie begins to consider
himself superior to those around him. He treats people in a way that he would
have never imagined as a poor farm boy. Similar to the Machiavellian model, Willie
does whatever it takes to gain power without losing his head entirely. His
clever, slightly pejorative tone constructs an intelligent and powerful persona
that should be feared. Instead of treating Duffy the same way he had been
treated, he took a much more cunning route, making himself look like the better
man.
The other thing that makes Willie Machiavellian in the sense that he will do anything to stay in power are the drastic measures that he is willing to go to. The best example is when the MacMurfee politicians attempt to have him impeached. "I gravely doubt that the Boss did any sleeping for two weeks that is, bed sleeping that is... He roared across the state at eighty miles an hour, the horn screaming... five or six or seven speakings in a day (P.207)." Willie's super human effort to gather all his support, and at the same time intimidate the "Heros" that MacMurfee has found to testify against him. After being used by Harrison in his initial run for governor Willie has gone through life with a Louisiana sized chip on his shoulder and a conviction to never let anything get in his way, and so far nothing has.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the way that Willie constructs himself (to be more influential or to gain power) seems somewhat Machiavellian. After all, in The Morals of the Prince, Machiavelli emphasizes that the way a Prince (or any leader) appears to be is critical to his position. Machiavelli writes, "to anyone who sees or hears him, he should appear all compassion, all honor, all humanity, all integrity, all religion." In All the King's Men, Jack points out an interesting idea about Willie, that seems to characterize The Boss as Machiavellian. Jack says, "...when anybody is interested in himself quite simply and directly the way Willie is interested in Willie you call it genius" (180) and he goes on to show, "[Henry Ford is] interested in Henry Ford and therefore he is a genius" (181). Jack seems to be pointing out that these powerful leaders pay attention to the way that they appear, they are interested in how they (themselves) come off to other people, and this is what leads to their success. Jack's idea is similar to Machiavelli's schemes for the success of a Prince.
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