In Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Proffesor, Foster describes a specific character type as a vampire character. He says that a vampire when it wakes up, says "In order to remain undead i must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own." A vampire character can not live on their own. They require other characters to give their lives a purpose or substance, without others they would have nothing to do and would not be worthy of being written about.
Jack Burden in All the King's Men is a quintessential example of a vampire character. Without the other characters in the book he would have one of the most dull and uneventful lifes ever. He rides characters like willie's success and basically lives off of him. He states in the book when asked why he works for Willie that he is not sure and doesnt know what he would do without him. Even in childhood he attaches to Anne and Adam Stanton and lives there life spending much time with there family and with judge Irwin. Part of this may not be his fault but the fault of the lack of a parent in either his mother or father. His mother was basically trapped in a teenager's body running around partying and going to clubs and his father left. His mother could not keep a husband for long after the scholarly attorney left which also negatively effected his ability to love his own life.
Even his name Burden is a sign of his being a vampire character. He is a burden on all of the people around him. He burdens them down and leeches off their life. Vampires are the ultimate burden on the people around them as they suck out their blood and infect them into becoming vampires themselves. This is essentially what Jack Burden does to the people around them as he leeches of their life and leaves them either dead or suffering from some mental illness in the case of Sadie Burke.
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