The evolution of Willie Stark as a state politician is presented. A self-professed uneducated country bumpkin, Willie gets into politics, initially running for a county treasury seat, in his belief that the political machine is corrupt and that he, an honest man, will bring back integrity in his outward goal of getting the truth to the people. Despite he posing no real threat to the establishment, the establishment does whatever it can to quash Willie's political voice, especially through intimidation. It isn't until the establishment believes it can use Willie to their advantage that Willie in turn discovers an opportunity to use the machine to his advantage instead in espousing a populist agenda. Getting a taste of power may give Willie a different view of politics than his outward view in the beginning. Also presented are a number of people around Willie who get out of him what they need for their own lives, Willie, in turn, only keeping people around if they can serve his interests: Lucy Stark, his former schoolteacher wife, has acted more as a mother to him than a wife; reporter Jack Burden, having grown up in privilege in an isolated enclave of the state called Burden's Landing, is trying to find his place in life without the connections of his childhood, and believed he found that in writing articles on Willie for his newspaper; Jack's childhood friend and his current girlfriend Anne Stanton, the daughter of a former respected governor, she who wants her husband, regardless of if it's Jack or anyone else, to be a somebody; and Sadie Burke, who has always surrounded herself by who can pay her the most for her brains, she who may see Willie as more than just a paycheck.—Huggo