All the King's Men Memory and the Past Quotes

This is one thing Jack means when he says he "drowned in West." He couldn't well remember all this stuff when he was in Mason City or Burden's Landing – where everything he needs to remember happened. He needed to get our of town in order to get a perspective on his past with Anne that would allow him to constructively deal with their present situation.

Jack is so hooked on memory that it intrudes on his love life, and Anne's. It will take them almost twenty years to get past the memories of the past. In other words, neither of them will forget that Jack left her cold after undressing her on that rainy night long ago.

Did you guess the Judge was Jack's father at this point? We didn't. But when we learn the truth, we flash back on our memory of reading these lines. Isn't memory nifty, in a grim kind of a way?