Some Brotherly Advice About a Fake Alzheimer’s Patient

[SPOILER ALERT {like, every spoil possible}]

In the book White Cat by Holly Black, Cassel discovers he is a worker. A worker is a criminal who can change something about or for someone else. There are Dream, Memory, Luck, Body, Death, Emotion, and Transformation workers. Transformation workers are one in a thousand and the most powerful, and Cassel just discovered that he is one. His brother Barron has been memory working him so he doesn’t remember anything under the orders of his other brother Phillip, and their mom. Cassel and his brothers have a really messed up relationship, and it’s mainly because Cassel is the strongest of the three of them, but doesn’t know it.

Cassel is very strong, for someone who thought he was “the only straight person in a crooked family”. Cassel felt like he didn’t belong, and I think that was really hard for him, especially since his brothers were so distant from him.  Barron always looked up to Phillip, and Phillip acted like Cassel was a waste of time. Cassel tried to prove himself to them, which is really heartbreaking considering how much they had deceived him. I think that although his relationship with his brothers isn’t the best, it helped make Cassel stronger, and eventually strong enough to work against his brothers.

At the end of the book on page 298 Barron drives over to Cassel’s school to have pizza with him. Barron is a memory worker, but the downside is that whenever he works someone, he looses his memories too. Cassel had changed some of Barron’s notebooks that held memories, and one of the memories that Cassel changed was that he and Barron went out for pizza every Tuesday. Cassel says, “Memory is funny. Barron seems relaxed, like he really likes me, because he doesn’t remember hating me. Or maybe he remembers the feeling of dislike but he assumes that he liked me more than he hated me.” I feel really bad for Cassel here because he remembers how his brother tried to kill him; while they are sitting together eating pizza, Barron is acting like he cares about Cassel. Barron hated Cassel because he felt that transformation work was wasted on Cassel. It must be really hard to see both sides of your sibling, and know that they are both partially fake.