Example Of Critical Thinking On All The King's Men: Significance Of Time In The Novel

Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the King's Men, is told from the point of view of Jack Burden, a law school dropout and former journalist who fell in love with his childhood friend, Anne Stanton. Jack narrates the story years after the events took place interspersed with flashbacks in most of the scenes. Thus, he uses mostly the past tense to describe the occurrences.
One of the more obvious themes in the novel is how specific characters regard time. Jack, for instance, often tried to connect time with the past and the present, often comparing and connecting his actions in the past to the person that he is in the present. It has allowed him to extricate himself from the present and live in the past, thereby, providing him an argument whether his past and present self are the same person, considering the elapsed time between the two. Because of his affinity with the past, he claims that the way to treat Time is to respect it and not tamper with it. For Jack, time is like a Super Being that is present, but cannot be questioned, confronted, or disputed.
On the other hand, Willie Stark, the state's governor, views time as justice's final revenge, which he actually wants to convey as time revealing all truths when the occasion is right. It means that if today things are a bit unclear, all will become known when the right time comes. This he said when he lost the Country Treasurer position.
Jack recounts the events in the past tense, but interestingly, he switched to using the present and future tense in the last chapter of the novel. This could mean his personal release from ties that he bound himself to in the past as he lives his life in the present and the new lesson he learned about accountability in his actions.