All The King's Men: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Jack returns to Burden’s Landing, and to his mother’s house—she is on vacation with Theodore, and so Jack has the house to himself. He begins thinking, after the commotion regarding Willie’s murder has died down somewhat, who could have been responsible for informing Adam of Anne’s affair with Willie. Jack senses that this information was perhaps deliberately relayed to Adam, in order to incite him to confront Willie.

Jack tracks down Sadie Burke, who has checked into a sanatorium for her nerves in the wake of Willie’s death—she has nearly had a mental breakdown. Jack goes to the sanatorium to ask if Sadie has any knowledge of who the person was who called Adam and told him of Willie’s and Anne’s affair. After some moments of anger—Sadie seems intensely annoyed at Jack’s question—she admits that Duffy was the one who called Adam, and, further flummoxing Jack, that she, Sadie, was the one who told Duffy to call. Jack is flabbergasted, and in his dismay can only repeat—you killed them, you killed Willie and Adam. Sadie admits to moral responsibility for this act, saying that she has received her punishment in some sense now, in her partial mental breakdown. She says that she knew she would have to tell someone that she is responsible, in part, for inciting the shooting.

Sadie tells Jack that she wanted Willie killed, or at least punished, because she knew that Willie loved Anne and was prepared to run way with her. Duffy had his own reasons for wanting Willie out of office—because Duffy was Lt. Governor, he would ascend to the position of Governor after Willie’s death, and would be able to control the awarding of contracts for the hospital—thus enriching himself via his business dealings with Gummy Larson. And because Adam would have committed the shooting, it would be very difficult to trace the impetus for the shooting back to Sadie and Duffy. It was a “perfect” crime.

Jack meets with Sadie, again, at the sanatorium, and she provides a signed affidavit of her conversation with Duffy and his intention to incite Adam to confront Willie. But in a later letter to Jack, sent by Sadie after the visit, she tells Jack that Jack ought to let the issue drop—he has no legal recourse against Duffy (Duffy merely informed Adam of an affair—it was Adam who committed the crime, and Adam is dead); and, politically, all Jack could do would be prevent Duffy from getting re-elected at the end of his emergency gubernatorial term. Sadie believes this is simply not worth the trouble of “pinning” Duffy for the crime.

Burden now begins wrapping up the narrative of his and Willie’s lives—he realizes that Sadie is right, that it is not worth publicizing the true nature of Willie demise, and of those who informed on him to bring about that death, since Duffy will probably be buffeted by Louisiana’s political winds anyway, and Sadie is a shell of her former self, wracked already by guilt over what she has incited. Jack sees Sugar-Boy, Willie’s old driver, around the Capitol’s library one day, and nearly tells Sugar-Boy who truly is responsible for Willie’s death—hoping Sugar-Boy will take out revenge on Duffy—but Jack decides, at the last second, not to do so, and lets Sugar-Boy walk away. Thus Jack essentially lays to bed any possibility of pursuing vengeance against Duffy.

Jack also learns, via the newspaper, that Tom Stark has died of the injuries he sustained during his injury on the football field—Jack goes to visit Lucy Stark at her farm-home, where she lives with her sister, and finds there the child that Lucy believes Tom fathered with Sibyl. Lucy understands that it is not definitive Tom was the father of the child, but Lucy doesn’t care—she wishes to raise the boy as her own, and she believes it is the right thing to do for the memory of Tom as well as Willie. Lucy tells Jack that she named the child Willie because Willie Stark “was a great man,” even though she had her differences, great and small, with her husband. Jack acknowledges that Willie was a great man, to Lucy, before leaving the farmhouse.

Jack decides to return to Burden’s Landing, leaving behind Baton Rouge for a time. He has inherited Irwin’s property—Irwin left most of his estate to Jack after his death—and because Jack also stands to inherit his mother’s considerable holdings after her death, he is more or less established in Burden’s Landing for life, and need not work again. When he arrives at his mother’s house, he finds out that his mother is leaving Theodore, whom she says she could not love anymore—she says to Jack, cryptically, that she believed Jack would understand that she could no longer live with Theodore. In a small surprise, however, Jack’s mother says she is going on an extended trip to Reno, and that she is allowing Theodore to take over the Burden house, instead of Jack, since Theodore loves living there, and Mrs. Burden feels guilty for leaving him behind and divorcing him without explanation. Jack is somewhat confused but chalks this up to his mother’s erratic behavior—he intends to live in the Irwin house anyway.

The narration then skips ahead, from 1939 into an undetermined future. Jack reveals that he has reconciled with Anne, who has also moved back to the Landing—they have begun a courtship again, and have married, after Anne’s urging that Jack abandon his bitterness and attempt to reconstruct a life for himself, a life he can enjoy and be proud of. Anne also asks Jack to take in the old man, the Scholarly Attorney, Jack always considered his father, and the three of them live together in the Irwin house in the Landing, since it appears Jack’s mother has moved permanently to Reno, leaving Louisiana behind.

Jack’s plan for his life, then, is as follows: he is to use the Irwin money, which he attempted to give to Lily Littlepaugh, only to find out she is dead—to write his book on Cass Mastern, which he fully intends to finish. At that point, he and Anne will sell the Irwin property and move away from the Landing and its painful memories. Anne has re-committed herself to the life of running the Children’s Home in Baton Rouge, and Jack believes that, only by making financial and spiritual amends in the Landing—and by taking in the Scholarly Attorney and caring for him—can be begin a new life of which he is proud. Jack ends the novel understanding that his cannot avoid his history, the story of his and Willie’s life, but he can only hope to make the rest of his life a story worth living and telling.