Big-O proof for a recurrence relation?
As you pointed out, the reason for splitting the term into two pieces is to be able to cancel the $an$ term. If we go directly from $(8/9)cn^2 + an \leq cn^2 + an$, then we get stuck as we cannot do anything with the $an$ term. By splitting it in the way described, this allows the $(1/9)cn^2$ to be larger than $an$ when $c \geq 9a$, which then gives you the desired result since $an - (1/9)cn^2 \leq 0$ for such values of $c$.