All the kings men the spider
All the kings men- the spiderThe Spider Web of Life
Throughout the novel, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, the characters are constantly feeling the effects of their action later in the book. Every one of their sinister, sketchy actions were dealt with again later in the book and not in pleasant circumstance. As Cass Mastern had figured out:
…the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide.(188-89)
This quote is a major theme that is encountered throughout the book.
Jack and the Judge, here is where we mainly see the web at work. Jack, at the request of Willie, went to dig up dirt on the Judge. Jack finds so many things out and as he exposes it everything goes wrong, the spider got him. When Jack reveals his findings to Judge Irwin, his father, he ends up killing himself before Jack has a chance to talk to him father to son. Although, for the most part, Jack's goal as stated at the beginning of the book was that he was to pursue truth and knowledge, he needed to leave this alone because it was a pursuit of knowledge, but it had no positive motive behind it, and, as we have encountered in previous books throughout the year and throughout this one, truth is not always a good and noble thing. In this case the truth led to what destroyed the Judge and Jack was pursuing the truth.
The Cass Mastern story provides an...
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