Jack ultimately realizes that one must "go out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time". It starred Georgiy Zhzhonov (Willie Stark), Mikhail Kozakov (Jack Burden), Alla Demidova (Anne), Oleg Yefremov (Adam), Rostislav Plyatt (Irwin), Lev Durov (Sugar Boy). Jack Burden has lived most of his life as though he were wrapped in a cocoon, and his story shows the process by which he is forced to emerge from this cocoon into a new life. Writing in the New Republic, George Mayberry wrote that the novel was "in the tradition of many classics", comparing the novel favorably with Moby-Dick, The Sun Also Rises, and The Great Gatsby.

A political novel set in the 1930s, "All the King's Men" follows the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a charismatic and corrupt politician in the American South. It was interesting that he made the corrupt politician a little sympathetic though, rather than a complete monster. It traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana.

The painfully awkward silence, and Jack’s mother’s subsequent response that she did not know he ‘…felt that – that way!

His approach to politics earns him many enemies in the state legislature, but does not detract from his popular appeal among many of his constituents, who respond with enthusiasm to his fiery populist manner. He sees his mother as a serial monogamist who married for the third time, and to a much younger man. After triggering his father’s death under circumstances that make the story of Oedipus look like an unfortunate happenstance, Burden accepts the inheritance of the man’s house and money without qualm or question.Politics merely provided the framework story in which the deeper concerns, whatever their final significance, might work themselves out. Meanwhile, he also finds out about Anne and Jack's past relationship and Anne's continued love for Jack, leading to a fallout between him and Anne.