Slaughter Blog Post #1

Throughout his novel, Robert Penn Warren uses highly specific and descriptive language to create vivid images that draw the reader in. After being called in to Jim Madison's office, the managing editor of the Chronicle, Jack and him are discussing Jack's assignment to travel to Mason City and find out more about Willie Talos. At the end of their conversation, Jim disposes of his cigar. "...took the foul, chewed, and spit-bright butt of what had been a two-bit cigar out of the corner of his mouth and inspected it and reached out at arm's length and let it fall into the big brass spittoon which stood out on the clover-deep, kelly-green carpet which bloomed like an oasis of elegance in the four floors of squalor of the Chronicle Building." For an action as simple as discarding a cigar, something the heavy-smokers of the book probably do countless times each day, Warren paints a ridiculously detailed image that instantly takes the reader inside Jim Madison's office. While a fairly average scene like this would usually be unmemorable, Warren's incredible use of language makes it stand out. It is easy to picture  the four-leaf clover colored rug, obnoxious and omnipotent throughout the Chronicle Building. Another scene that should not be particularly noteworthy but is thanks to Warren's language, Jack asks Willie if Willie winked at him the first time they met. "'Boy,' he said and toyed with his glass of Scotch and soda and dug the heel of one of his unpolished, thirty-dollar, chastely designed bench-made shoes into the best bed-spread the St. Regis Hotel could afford -and the St. Regis is no flop-house. 'Boy,' he said, and smiled at me paternally over the beaker of imported fire-water, 'that is a mystery.'"Again, what normally would be a simple scene is a vivid, super-descriptive series of images that helps the reader picture exactly what the author is thinking. Warren creates vibrant scenes like this constantly throughout All The King's Men, making it easy for the reader to become engaged in and creating a story unlike any that I have ever read.