The book All The Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren has
a southern feel almost right away. From its diction and syntax to its use of
description and the situations they are describing the book are clearly
southern right away. For example, not even a page into the book you get this
blaring example of old style southern culture, “Then a nigger choppin cotton a
mile away, he’ll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing
above the vitriolic, arsenic green of the cotton row and up against the violent
metallic, throbbing blue of the sky, and he’ll say, ‘Lord Gawd, its another one
done done hit!’ And then next nigger down the next row, he’ll say, ‘Lord Gawd’
and the first nigger will giggle, and the hoe will lift again and the blade
will flash in the sun like a heliograph” (1-2). This is a perfect example of
southern culture blaring through. Primarily,
people outside the south didn’t really refer to black people as “niggers”
nearly as much as southern people did and secondly the situation of standing in
lines under the big blue sky picking cotton is a very southern situation
considering the biggest export of the south was cotton and tobacco at the time.
In addition, the use of fantastic vivid details like the “vitriolic, arsenic
green of the cotton row and up against the violent metallic, throbbing blue of
the sky” gave the book a vivid feel, as if I could see what was happening right
before my eyes. Also, even when the main
character Willie makes his way through his small home town people make a huge
fuss because he is a petty big deal. You know you’re a small southern town when
your biggest politician is named Willie.
I agree with Cole, in that the strong southern culture is deeply rooted in All The King's Men, and seems to be his motif throughout the first chapter. In addition to the verbal slang that Cole emphasized, there seems to be buried stories and themes in Warren's description of the country landscape. People often refer to things "rooted in soil" and Warren's description of the countryside depicts both Jack and the Boss's perspectives. "I heard somebody open and shut the gate to the barn lot, but I didn't look around. If I didn't look around it would not be true that somebody had opened the gate with the creaky hinges, and that is a wonderful principle for a man to get hold of" (44). I know that we have analyzed this quote a bit in class, but after referring to it again, I realize that every single word is a train of thought that has much history. Just like Cole's example of the word "nigger", "creaky hinges", and "barn doors" suggest an elderly and vivid feeling. A feeling that Jack isn't ready to confront in himself. Furthering that sentence with "steps coming closer and closer", parallels exactly his thought process. "We kept on leaning against the fence, watching the light lying across the country and hitting the clump of trees down the rise...'Things don't change much around here, though,' the Boss said. That didn't seem to demand any response, and so I didn't give him any" (45). I couldn't help but try to make the comparison between the oncoming footsteps and watching the rays of light finally hit the trees. The detail of the lucid landscape, like the southern slang, seems to also be a motif throughout the book and depicts the characters' memories and lost, soil-rooted stories perfectly.
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