Warren Stark Character Analysis

In the novel, Warren portrays the state of Louisiana as poor, deprived, hopeless, and susceptible to the charms of populism and demagoguery. Set during the Great Depression and centered around political figures from the rural South, it was bound to deal with rampant poverty, but this deprivation serves a special purpose for the novel; it helps provide a context for both Stark’s popularity and Stark’s authoritarianism. The poor in this Louisiana need a savior, and Willie Stark fits the mold. From raising taxes across the board to fighting out-of-state corporations to building a world-class free medical center, Stark’s policies are bound to help the poor and hurt the rich. The descriptions of Louisiana’s poverty also provide a sort of justification for his authoritarian tendencies. Living in a broken Louisiana completely dominated by the powerful, Stark must keep full control over all his surrogates to carry out …show more content…
Burden’s calm life after the chaos of intertwining scheming refreshes the reader and allows them to experience the recovery his Burden. Stating that he slowly grew out of his nihilistic and apathetic ways, he completes his character arc and becomes a wise man. His marriage to Anne Stanton, foretold in their childhoods but abandoned in adulthood, also reverses his collapse during the novel. Burden also states that he will complete a novel on Cass Mastern, representing his full acceptance of the past and the turn his life has taken. In the final few lines, Burden sums up his future by saying that “we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time” (p. 661). The end of the novel is radically different in tone from the rest, but this difference provides it with a fitting end: the end of the chaos and hope for the