In All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warrren, while Jack Burden was working for his Ph.D in American History, he comes across a story about a man named Cass Mastern. Although Jack spends countless hours researching about Cass Masterns life, he was never able to finish writing about him since he believed that he could not understand Cass’s life. It was because Jack did not understand how in order to understand the past he must understand the present and how the present can become the past. Jack struggles with philosophical debate of living in the past or the present. All the King’s Men is told through past memoires and events described by the present day Jack. Part of the reason that past Jack could never understand the present was because
