Examples Of Free Will In All The King's Men

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All the King’s Men is a novel full of shocking plot twists and incredible character development. Each character has the ability to make their own decisions in the novel, but at points, it seems as if it does not matter what decisions are made as some characters are destined for a life of corruption and hardship. That raises a central question: Do humans have free will? Through character development and the use of Jack Burden’s Great Twitch and Spider Web theories, the novel answers this question. First, to come to a conclusion, one must know what the term “free will” means. Free will can be defined as the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. It essentially means that humans …show more content…
Jack comes up with this theory on his trip out West in chapter seven. Jack discovers the affair between Anne and Willie and becomes so upset that he decides to take a short trip to clear his mind. He travels to California and stays in his hotel the entire time thinking about his life and the decisions he has made. He refuses to take responsibility for his actions so he develops The Great Twitch. While in his hotel room, Jack decides that he is not responsible for Anne and Willie’s affair or any other terrible event he has experienced or caused anybody. Jack says, “So I fled west from the fact, and in the West, at the end of History, the Last Man on that Last Coast, on my hotel bed, I had discovered the dream. That dream was the dream that all life is but the dark heave of blood and the twitch of the nerve….First, that you cannot lose what you never had. Second, that you are not guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West, after all. If you believe the dream you dream when you go there” (Warren 467). Jack is saying that life is completely random, and one cannot have responsibility for actions that one has no control over. This means that humans do not have free will and every event in an individual’s life has been predestined. If this is true, one cannot be at fault for making a bad decision because, in actuality, they did not have a choice. This theory makes Jack feel much better about himself which is why he adopts it and keeps it for much of the
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