Elise DePlanche, Spring 2010
At a pivotal moment in the 1949 film All the King’s Men, aspiring governor Willie Stark stumbled drunkly onto a state fair stage to give an address the town would never forget. While the audience expected the lawyer-gone-politician to present a calm, stately discourse full of figures and issues they didn’t entirely understand, Stark unleashed a hurtfully frank, wildly emotional speech that shattered the standards set by society for political rhetoric. Willie Stark’s style was clearly inappropriate for the rhetorical situation he stepped into, but it had an astounding impact on his audience. His “persuasive and extraordinary [use] of language”, as Crowley and Hawhee define style in their book Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, worked with the character his style created to deviate from the norm so dramatically that they captured his audience’s attention and distinguished him from the urban competition. Now many readers might be thinking to themselves, “If Stark’s tactics were so effective, how could they have been inappropriate?” Such readers must consider this passage from Crowley and Hawhee: “the achievement of an appropriate style requires rhetors to pay attention to the conventional rules for verbal behavior in a given context” (283). Stark’s style is highly inappropriate because instead of carefully heeding the societal standards for campaign speeches in his state, he trampled them down like flimsy green weeds.
His audience expected politicians to be calm and reasonable in demeanor, using a professional tone and style to convey intelligence and a cool-headed ability to make decisions. Also, candidates looking for votes are typically polite to their audiences. Stark, however, employed a series of frank and offensive metaphors that slapped his audience in the face with the state of their lives. He asked them, “What about your kids? Are they growin’ up ignorant as dirt, ignorant as you, ‘cause there’s no school for ‘em?”1, not only asserting that his audience was as ignorant as dirt, but also that they could be equated to dirt, as the parallel structure implies. After a rowdy interruption in which Stark grabbed a city politician by the arm and loudly compared him to Judas Ascariot (which in itself displays a lack of consideration for the dignified manner expected of him), he angrily told the band and his bustling audience to “shut up! Shut up, all o’ ya!” Such unabashedly rude language is far from fitting within the “conventional rules for verbal behavior” (Crowley and Hawhee 283), as is a later demeaning comparison of the audience to untrained dogs (“Are you standin’ on your hind legs? Have you learned to do that much yet?”).
Willie Stark also constructed an unexpected, and consequently inappropriate, character for himself throughout his speech. The creation of this character came about through the stylistic choices Stark made. He made it clear from the very beginning that his style was going to be much less formal than those used by other politicians. He began the speech not with a formal greeting or an egocentric introduction, but with a simple, friendly salutation: “My friends”. A few sentences later he struck a conversational tone toward the audience—“Listen to your stomach. Did you ever feel it rumble for hunger?” This style continued similarly throughout the speech, especially during Stark’s use of enargeia, a figure of thought in which the rhetor vividly recreates a scene for his audience (Crowley and Hawhee 302). In one such line, he summarizes his childhood with an overly casual tone: “Aw, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right”. Crowley and Hawhee note that “[a]ncient teachers distinguished three very general levels of style that were appropriate to various rhetorical settings: grand, middle, and plain” (283). From his informal, yet ornament-filled language, it can be easily determined that Stark chose to use the middle style, which “does not use ordinary prose, but…develops arguments in a leisurely fashion and…uses as many commonplaces as can be worked into the argument without drawing attention to their presence” (Crowley and Hawhee 284).
Stark knew that his audience was comprised almost entirely of rural working-class families, and so was able to employ relevant commonplaces to make his arguments. One such commonplace, or “statement…that is commonly shared among a given audience or a community” (Crowley and Hawhee 430), was the idea that the “politicians down in the city” did not have the rural population’s best interests in mind. He asserted that “nobody ever helped a hick but a hick!”, pitting himself as a helpful fellow hick against the city politicians who had done little to relieve the plights of the audience. Stark strengthened the diametric characters he was creating for himself and the city politicians by drawing on a fundamentally American belief about equality: “that even the plainest, poorest man can be governor if his fellow citizens find he’s got the stuff for the job”. He included this statement as part of his use of enargeia, recalling how the city politicians defied this innocent ideal by deceiving him so they could alter the election in their favor. This led to a strong implication that his urban competitors did not believe in the American virtue of equality, casting them in a treacherous light while he became the upright defender of national ideals. Thus, not only did Stark use commonplaces to increase the distance between himself and the politicians running against him, but he also used them to fortify the honest, hick character he was crafting.
As Willie Stark used enargeia, the middle style, and commonplaces to contrast himself from the city politicians, he engaged in a figure of thought called ethopoeia, defined by Crowley and Hawhee as “character portrayal [that] may deal with a person’s qualities as well as her physical characteristics” (304). Drawing on the commonplace that “hicks” are hard-working, honest people, Stark used a myriad of tactics to place himself among this group so that his audience could identify with him. For example, he described his time studying to become a lawyer, saying “he [Stark] sat up nights and studied books”. He also recalled a youth full of hard work: “He [Stark] knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse.” Such a character, a “country boy” who rose from his humble beginnings to become an educated man running for governor, is admirable for most Americans, who idealize similar rags-to-riches stories. When Stark follows up his emotional enargeia with a declaration of his opposition to the city politicians, his audience is eager to emanate his admirable character, and so quickly joins him in a fight against the other candidates.
Additionally, Stark ignored the conventions of correctness and clarity that have been fundamental to successful rhetoric since ancient times. Crowley and Hawhee remark that “ancient authors agreed that that a good style ought to manifest correctness, clearness, appropriateness, and ornament” (280). Because these qualities of ‘good style’ are so old, audiences expect them from persons such as politicians who speak publicly for a living. Stark exhibited only ornament, or “uses of language that [are] unusual or extraordinary” (Crowley and Hawhee 285), as he used incorrect grammar (“[the city politicians] rode up to his house…and said as how they wanted him to run for governor”) and colloquial language, which has the potential to obscure clarity (“He grew up on the dirt roads and the gully-washes of a farm”). While this rule-breaking further enforced the inappropriateness of Stark’s style, it was very effective in adding to the creation of Stark’s “hick” character and allowed the audience to better relate to him.
While almost all politicians use ethopoeia, the characters they create are drastically different than the one Willie Stark forges. The audience anticipated the presentation of a rich, composed character who would brag about his qualifications and discuss complex political issues. However, Stark builds a character that defies all of these expectations, and is thus inappropriate. He recalls his humble upbringing through enargeia, loses his temper and begins to shout, concedes to having been fooled, and speaks not of legislative plans, but of simple rebellion against being duped by those in power.
Stark did much of his stylistic character building during the beginning and middle of his speech, waiting until he had captured the audience’s attention to deliver his main message. His timing can be called kairos, defined by ancient rhetor Gorgias as “seizing the right moment to speak, the moment when listeners are ready to hear” (Crowley and Hawhee 282). Stark cleverly created the moment when his listeners were ready to hear, thereby taking advantage of a kairotic moment he designed himself. This is once again unusual and inappropriate, as most politicians enter into a public speech assuming that the audience is already primed to receive their address.
Lastly, it should be noted that Stark’s delivery techniques reinforced his empassioned, hick character. Contrary to the audience’s expectations that politicians will stand calmly in one place, using careful hand gestures that imitate their well-thought-out style, Stark was an explosion of dramatic movements. He piqued curiosity at the beginning of the speech when he tossed his pre-written discourse across the stage, a gesture so unexpected that it grabbed his audience’s attention and left them in suspense.
Crowley and Hawhee relay Aristotle’s opinion that “[t]he expression of emotion [can] be altered by variations in volume, pitch, and rhythm” (333). Stark used a loud, shouting style of speech to express his hard upbringing, emotional upset over being fooled, and promise to “fool somebody” as he ran for governor. All the while, his face was twisted into a near-snarl that showed his outrage, and as he made his promises that he was going to stay in the race to get back at the city politicians and “fool somebody”, he prowled across the stage like an angry lion. As he made his points, Stark thrusted his head at the audience so violently that his hairdo came apart, flapping around as he spoke. Additionally, the animated candidate pointed to specific audience members as he asked rhetorical questions, and used gestures that reached down to them while he spoke. While all of these features strengthen ethopoeia and keep the audience riveted on Stark, they make his style inappropriate for a situation in which he is expected to be less animated. Even Crowley and Hawhee remark that “the use of gestures should be appropriate to the rhetorical situation:—bodily delivery should be subdued on formal occasions” (335). Thus, there is no doubt that Stark’s delivery tactics were abnormal and inappropriate.
Thus, Stark’s character, style, and delivery techniques clearly set him apart from his competition and captivated the attention of his audience. However, the brutal honesty, emotionally charged shouts, and vigorous gestures that served these purposes also made Stark’s style extremely inappropriate for the rhetorical situation he was engaged in. All the King’s Men presents one situation in which inappropriate political discourse leads not to scandal and infamy, but to widespread success and popularity.
1 Note: All uncited quotes taken from a written version of Stark’s speech found at Wikiquote.org, to which the author of this paper has added punctuation or words omitted as she felt were necessary for accuracy.
Works Cited
“All the King’s Men (1949 film)”. Wikiquote.org. Wikiquote. Apr 7, 2010. Web. Apr 12, 2010.
Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004. Print.