A distant ancestor of Jack’s, Cass Mastern was a student at Transylvania College just before the Civil War, where he carried on an affair with his friend Duncan’s wife Annabelle. Cass later found a life of religion and died in the Civil War. Jack intended to write his doctoral dissertation on Cass but could not. At the end of the novel, Jack is planning, finally, to finish this book on Cass’s life.
Cass Mastern Quotes in All The King's Men
The All The King's Men quotes below are all either spoken by Cass Mastern or refer to Cass Mastern. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4
Quotes
Jack Burden came into possession of the papers from the grandson of Gilbert Mastern. When the time came for him to select a subject for his dissertation for his Ph.D., his professor suggested that he edit the journal and letters of Cass Mastern, and write a biographical essay . . . .
Related Characters:
Jack Burden (speaker), Cass Mastern
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Explanation and Analysis:
But now and then Duncan Trice had to be out of town on business, and on those occasions Cass would be admitted, late at night, to the house . . . so he actually lay in the very bed belonging to Duncan Trice.
Related Characters:
Jack Burden (speaker), Cass Mastern, Duncan Trice
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
. . . the day came when Jack Burden sat down at the pine table and realized that he did not know Cass Mastern. He did not have to know Cass Mastern to get the degree; he only had to know the facts about Cass Mastern’s world. But without knowing Cass Mastern, he could not put down the facts about Cass Mastern’s world.
Related Characters:
Jack Burden (speaker), Cass Mastern
Related Themes:
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Cass Mastern Character Timeline in All The King's Men
The timeline below shows where the character Cass Mastern appears in All The King's Men. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4
...when she visited briefly early in his graduate tenure. Burden was writing his dissertation on Cass Mastern, a distant family relation, whose letters he had been sent, by a long-unknown family...
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...Burden’s account of this family story, which was to form the basis of his dissertation. Cass Mastern was one of two maternal uncles of Ellis Burden, the Scholarly Attorney, Jack’s father....
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The picture of Cass, an early and smudged photo, Jack finds haunting—it is Cass in his Confederate soldier’s uniform,...
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Cass’s brother, Gilbert, fifteen years older than Cass, walked from north Georgia as a boy (leaving...
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Gilbert taught Cass all the gentlemanly arts of riding and of managing a plantation for three years, but...
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But Burden discovers, again through Cass’s journal, that Cass also learned to live a life of vice and dissipation at Transylvania,...
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That summer after his first year, with Cass back at Valhalla to be with his brother, Cass received a note from Annabelle reading...
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The affair lasted all of Cass’s second year, with Cass sneaking over to the Trice house when Duncan was away on...
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...night after Duncan’s funeral, which was a public event in Lexington, drawing many prominent people, Cass went to visit Annabelle in a small back-house of the Trice plantation, and there, Annabelle,...
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...upset to realize that Duncan was aware of Annabelle’s affair (and that it was with Cass), and doubly upset that Phebe, one of the servants was aware too. Although Annabelle has...
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Cass then discovered, several days after Duncan’s funeral, that Annabelle had sold Phebe down the river...
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In Lexington, Cass realized that Annabelle had fled back to Washington, DC, where she was born and raised—at...
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Cass was granted another parcel of land from his brother Gilbert, and though he did not...
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There, Cass began a career in the law, which continued until 1861 and the start of the...
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...a dissertation for his doctorate. But Jack realized that, despite knowing all the facts of Mastern’s life, and of the impact this life had on others, and on the way in...
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...squalid apartment sent him his box of PhD materials, including the letters, the photo of Cass, and the ring, which have followed Jack from place to place, and which sit in...
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Chapter 10
...give to Lily Littlepaugh, only to find out she is dead—to write his book on Cass Mastern, which he fully intends to finish. At that point, he and Anne will sell...
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