From Tension To Reconciliation:Warren’s Philosophy Of Self Reflected In All The King’s Men

Robert Penn Warren is regarded as an important successor to William Faulkner in American Southern literature, yet he doesn’t confine his view to the South, but tries to explore the complex situations of human existence. Such a deep concern for the problems of the time renders him as one of the most influential writers of America in the twentieth century. Throughout his literary career, Warren carries a continuous research into man’s increasing sense of self-disintegration and the possibility of reconstruction of self. With the accumulation of writing experience, Warren puts forward his own view of self and gives a clear definition of it in Democracy and Poetry from two dimensions. On the one hand, he sees self as continuity in time, and attaches much importance to the past in self-construction. On the other hand, self, according to him, should be a social moral agent with responsibility for himself and others. Warren’s philosophical thought is an extension of the American tradition of the quest for self-identity in literature, but he also infuses new idea into it. His philosophy of self provides a feeling of relative stability for individuals amid the indifferent and meaningless world resulting from social changes.All the King’s Men represents the summit of Warren’s literary achievements and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. The novel involves various aspects of life and presents a comprehensive picture of the South in transition from the traditional agricultural society to one marked by modern industry. In this novel, Warren expresses his thoughts about history, humanity and morality, which endows the novel with philosophical profoundness. More importantly, the novel’s representation of self-division and self-construction best illustrates Warren’s own philosophical understanding of self. To demonstrate the extreme sides of self-division, Warren creates two kinds of people-the man of "fact" represented by Willie Stark and the man of "idea" represented by Adam Stanton. Because both of them lack a full vision of human experience, they adhere stubbornly to their own ideas of humanity as well as principles of conduct. Suffering from incompleteness in character, they finally die in a conflict of tension. Despite all the tragedies, the spiritual journey of Jack Burden to self-wholeness conveys a consoling message. However, the journey is by no means easy or natural. Jack undergoes a painful process from self-negation to self-awareness and to self-acceptance. His historical researches into the past contribute a lot to his moral growth and enable him to change from a detached observer of life to an active participant. Although some previous studies have touched upon the issue of self-seeking in this novel, most of them only relate it to the analysis of a single character in the story. Taking this into account, this thesis is to put this issue into a larger frame and reveal Warren’s philosophy of self reflected in the representation of self-division and self-construction in the novel.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces Robert Penn Warren and his masterpiece All the King’s Men. It also gives a general survey of previous studies of the novel both at home and abroad, and explains the focus and structure of the thesis.The second chapter mainly analyzes the reasons for the "terrible division" faced by the modern man and its manifestation in All the King’s Men. In terms of the social factor, the irresistible invasion of Northern industrialization not only makes life easier and brings material abundance but also leads to moral confusion and a collision of different values. In terms of the psychological factor, Warren ascribes self-division to man’s dual nature and the constant struggle between good and evil. In the novel, Willie Stark and Adam Stanton represent the contradiction between realism and idealism, and their common tragedies expose the potential danger of man’s terrible proclivity to one extreme of them.The third chapter concentrates on the process of Jack Burden’s self-construction, or in other words, of how he comes to reconcile with the world. This process consists of three stages. Initially, Jack drifts between Willie and Adam or the worlds they represent but enters neither of them. Relying on his self-conceived philosophy, he finds excuses to retreat from reality. As a student of history, he craves for objective investigations of the past. Interestingly, two of the investigations thrust him into the reality and waken him up to his own evils in the past as well as his inseparable relation to the world. Eventually, he accepts his past with its sins and traumas and is determined to go into the future with the assumption of responsibility in a world of "Spider Web".The forth chapter, based on the discussions in the previous chapters, aims to reveal Warren’s philosophy of self. According to Warren, self is a development in time, and its past, as psychological experience, works on the present and influences the future. Therefore, a whole self is based on a true understanding and acceptance of history. Moreover, self should be a moral agent with responsibility. Meanwhile, Warren points out the dynamic feature of self-construction in consideration of the ever-changing situations resulting from the fighting dichotomies. Self must go through a lasting process of defining, adjusting and redefining.The last chapter is Conclusion. It summarizes the previous discussions and restates the arguments of the thesis. It points out that, as a serious moralist, Warren shows his deep concern for man’s disintegrating sense of self and their existential state, and that his philosophy of self is highly significant for the modern man who strives to seek his self-value and to establish a harmonious relationship with himself and with the world.