Post #1

Aria Schwartz - ATKM Post 1

The Cass Mastern story in All The King’s Men is a cautionary tale that foreshadows and helps to shine some light on the motivations of Jack’s character. In chapter four, author Robert Penn Warren describes the disturbing story of Jack’s great uncle, Cass Mastern. He was a slaveowner who fought for the confederacy and became an abolitionist in hopes to atone for the neglect of his slave, Phebe. Both Jack and Cass Mastern will have an epiphany, when they realize that the lives they are living are morally wrong. In Cass’s case it happens when he becomes an abolitionist and in Jack’s case it will be realizing that he should not serve a man who is power hungry and corrupt. This story exists to show how in this world there is cause and effect. “Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide.” (p.200) Jack comes to learn that the choices that individuals make can have positive and negative repercussions. To that day Jack was experiencing the ripples that were left by his distant relative. He will need to come to terms with the understanding that his actions too can either heal wounds or leave scars. Because the story of Jack trying to decide if his moral compass led him astray parallels the story of Cass Mastern learning for himself what is right and wrong, one can only predict that this story is a foreshadowing of the events that are yet to unravel.