While you’re always free to talk about anything that interested you in the novel, here are some prompts you might want to consider for Going After Cacciato:
- “Cacciato” means hunted down or captured in Italian. Why this name? How is the character described? What do you think he suggests or represents in the novel?
- Discuss the novel’s narrator, Paul Berlin–you might consider his name, his background, his relationship to his father, his “fear biles,” his dreams, etc.
- Choose a specific scene or section, such as falling into the tunnels, Cacciato as a monk in Mandalay, the escape from Tehran, etc. to discuss in detail. What does this scene add to the novel?
- What are we to think about Sarkin Aung Wan and her relationship with Paul Berlin?
- What happened to Lt. Sidney Martin and what’s unusual about the way the scenes in Lake Country relating to him are described?
- Discuss the book’s complex structure or metafictional elements
I feel like one of the most interesting parts of this novel is honestly the narrator Paul Berlin. His insecurities as a soldier, son, and person help drive the novel because he’s constantly trying to find a way to prove himself to others. His relationship with his father was specifically interesting to me because you can obviously tell there is a layer of desperateness to prove himself to his father. His dream of bringing medals home, metals he’ll never receive since he’s perceived as a deserter, to be seen as a war hero in his father’s eyes. It makes me wonder what his relationship was like him before since we only hear about Berlin’s desire to be a man in his father’s eyes. I can imagine why his father sees him as a joke being that he falls in love with a woman he meets on the go.
His attitude with the group and overall joking manner about war at first made me think that he did not take things seriously, but upon further inspection, it is evident he uses humor as a way to cope with the horrors he has seen. While all of the men cope differently, I feel that they all share a unison of jokes to help provide sanity amidst the chaos of war. However, I do question Paul Berlin’s mental stability with the way the novel ended. If anyone has any ideas or thoughts on the ending, I’d love to hear them!
Even after reading the criticism, it seems that people aren’t completely certain what happens at the end of the novel–if Cacciato dies or escapes, I mean. I personally think Cacciato escapes because Berlin’s reaction to situation doesn’t read to me, like a reaction one would have toward death, especially because Berlin reacts very emotionally to the deaths of the other soldiers.
I also thought it was interesting that Berlin mulled over his inability to be courageous or win medals. One might argue that he created the going after Cacciato sequence to finally prove to himself that he could be courageous–even if just in his imagination. But, in my opinion, Berlin fails, even in his fantasy, to be courageous. I think this is mainly because of the war that Berlin is fighting in–there’s no room for valiance in a senseless war that’s not even worth fighting.
This novel has been described to me as genre bending, with these elements of absurdity and magical realism. I think the character of Cacciato —his undefined face, the constant assertion that he’s just a dummy, and the very slim personal details we are thrown throughout the novel like the satirically sad tune he whistles, his love of candy bars but willingness to eat anything — play into the challenge of disbelief. How could this kid, with just barely enough research and topographical information, lead (unintentionally at times, but later deliberately) these men across continents? At what point do we accept that this narrative is not a dream, or do we at all? Cacciato acts as a shapeshifter, at points he’s just a dumb kid but he also becomes one of the “untouchable” monks, he flaps his arms goodbye from the mountain like a bird, Stink grabs him in the jungle and he bites his way out of grasp like an animal, he’s a stoic fisherman at the moment of decision regarding Sidney Martin. Is he a reflection of all the roles the soldier must play? All the urges (hunger, fear, boredom, imagination, flight) that haunt all of the men as they track him down? Is he deserving of the consequences of desertion, which are frequently laced with death (thinking of the beheading in Tehran), do you think Paul Berlin and the others would be able to go through with turning him in even if they caught him? Possibly this dynamic changed as the march progressed. By the end is he just a fragment of their whole, a begrudging shred of hope they all need, even if it’s just to save their own asses?
You raised some great points about who Cacciato is and what kind of person he is. The narrator painted him as some dummy, but I believe he was smart enough to shock everyone when he successfully deserted the army. If he was such a dummy, he wouldn’t have been able to navigate the terrain and survive across many landscapes for months. He survived, shedding parts of his identity at points close enough apart, that his squad would stay on his trail. So, I asked myself if Cacciato wanted to get caught or does he simply want them to follow him out. He left clues, stayed only just ahead of the team, and when he got caught sometimes he was pleasant and didn’t immediately run away. I believe Cacciato was smart. Towards the end of the novel, even Berlin was saying he wonders why soldiers don’t desert by the millions. Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea if the soldiers walk away. Maybe the war would end for them if they did.
The lake country chapter left a deep impression on me as I put the book down. There is a strong hint that what happened to Lt. Sidney Martin was a crime far more unspeakable than desertion, with everyone in the group doing his share as an accomplice, Cacciato included. What struck me in that scene was the cryptic yet gripping way Tim O’Brien toyed with tension – Cacciato fishing on his boat, Paul Berlin asking him to touch the grenade, as a sign of acquiescence for murdering their lieutenant; How Cacciato subtly yet smoothly delayed touching it for as long as he could, how Paul Berlin put the grenade on his skin… The darkness and despair contained in that scene really drove home the point that in sharp contrast to WWII, Vietnam War was a chaotic, draining tragedy without a “right side” or a “good moral”, that lives were lost without a purpose, without a meaning, that “In Nam, no one likes no one, no one respects no one”, to quote old Lt. Corson’s words.
Cacciato, interestingly, had an ambiguous face in the novel, and was often portrayed as an outsider, even in the crucial moment in the lake country chapter. I wondered how this tied into his desertion – he didn’t seem to be scared into deserting. Was he utterly disillusioned after Lt. Sidney Martin’s death?
Paul Berlin was a very relatable narrator, sympathetic, sensitive, fearful, he readily fell back on imagination and pretend play to keep himself together. He was a relatable narrator, but not a reliable one, his perspective gave space for the magical realism to fit in the fiction. Sarkin Aung Wan seemed to be once again a character whose sole job in a war story was to satisfy male fantasy – both from the characters and from the author, maybe? Ah, her age bothers me…
One scene that stood out to me was the entire chapter of “Pickup Games”. Tim O’Brien’s writing feels strongest to me at the chapter level. They function almost like complete, standalone short stories at times. I think “Pickup Games” is a great example of this dynamic. It stands out as having its own complete arc separate of the novel storyline. The fighting ceases for a little while. Suddenly, the platoon does not have to worry about ambushes nor do they need to remain alert at all times. They begin to relax. One of the helicopter crewmen leaves them with a basketball. I could think of few things more American than a game of pickup basketball. The men suddenly have something that resembles normalcy. And in a move that shows O’Brien at his best, the normalcy and calmness begins to eat at them. Slowly. Subtly. Almost imperceptibly. The tension begins rising. He achieves this through a simple but effective use of repetition. “And the lull continued” (102), “the lull continued” (104), “But the lull did not end” (107). They continue to anticipate a threat, waiting for the other shoe to drop so to speak, but it does not materialize. They turn on one another. The pickup basketball games end. The tension grows and grows. When the lull finally ends, it is not in an outright battle. There is no attack, no planned ambush from the enemy. Instead, one of the men steps on a landmine and is most likely killed by the blast. I believe this is the only time Rudy Chassler is referred to by name. But the men only feel relief. The sound of the explosion is described as “muffled, almost fragile” (110). This is another classic O’Brien move. After amplifying the silence to the point of a deafening roar for over ten pages, the actual explosion is quiet. The subversion leads to something close to cinematic for me as a reader. A subtle but poignant period mark for the end of a chapter about the insidious boredom and quiet chaos of combat in the Vietnam War.
I think the aspect that arrested me the most in the novel was the characters and the way they spoke to and about one another in the novel. While I have read a few of O’Brien’s works in the past and know about the style that he employs in his work, it still shocks me every single time. The opening of the novel clarifies for the reader that Vietnam and the war is nothing but absolute death and destruction for these people and this ultimately changes their psychies. After listing off eight members of their squad that had died in the war, we are given insight as to how these soldiers cope with these losses. They use jokes. They joke about the living and the dead and all the terrible conditions of the war. The effect of this might led some readers to think that these characters are heartless and cold against the things they joke about, but that is far from the truth. One character that is briefly mentioned in the list of the dead is a man by the name of “Ready Mix”. While, this character is minor to the overall plot of the novel, the nickname that he is given to indicate his death shows the reader that these soldiers truly do care for one another, since they had the sense of camaraderie (or at least enough of it) to give a man the nickname of “Ready Mix”. The same can be said for Billy Boy Watkins as well. In spite of this camaraderie, the living soldiers still joke and tease about their passings along with other things about the war in order to not get bogged down in the despair that the war ultimately creates for all of them. They also use other coping mechanisms as well that are more straightforward and less cynically charged such as drugs throughout the novel as well, but the use of jokes by the characters is perhaps the most intriguing to analyze and discuss out of all of these coping mechanisms.
Even through the very end of the novel I never knew quite what to make of Paul Berlin’s relationship with Sarkin Aung Wan. The way Paul Berlin describes her upon their first meeting set me up to believe that their story might be on par with Frederic and Catherine in A Farewell to Arms; although troubling and difficult to interpret at times, there was a mutual feeling of love and desire. He finds her physically attractive and sees that she has a youthful quality to her – both in her looks and in her actions, despite being an adult (at least I read it this way; her constant coaxing of Paul Berlin to get what she wants is something beyond the ability of a child, in my opinion).
However, as they journey closer to Paris I got the distinct impression that their romantic relationship was based more on performance than reality. For example, rather than stating that they kiss or have sex, Paul Berlin states that they pretend to kiss, or pretend to make love. They both find in their imagined relationship not something amorous but an escape from the war. Paul Berlin is able to escape the reality that he is a deserter, imagined or not, and Sarkin Aung Wan that she is a victim of war in calling herself a refugee, a term she almost romanticizes. I found it interesting that having successfully made a home at the dilapidated Paris apartment, Paul Berlin chooses to leave this escape while Sarkin Aung Wan embraces it with another male figure, Lieutenant Corson.
In Chapter 44 the narration shifts to a drama where Paul Berlin and Sarkin Aung Wan debate the virtues of embracing happiness verses fulfilling obligations and maintaining one’s reputation, respectively. I saw this as a turning point for Paul Berlin where he could no longer give in to his imaginations. He has toyed with the idea of desertion and used his ‘affection’ for Sarkin Aung Wan as a way to justify it. Ultimately, though, his relationship with Sarkin Aung Wan has never been real, in a literal and figurative sense as we see by the end of the novel. What is real for him, however, is the need he has to be loved by his family and friends.
Similar to Vonnegut, O’Brien utilizes fantasy in order to come to terms with the gritty reality of war. O’Brien builds on the genre of magical realism by creating a narrative that resembles a fairy tale. While Vonnegut incorporates magical elements in practically every scene, O’Brien appears to have a more clear separation between fantasy and reality. Perhaps one of the more important elements of magical realism in the novel is the use of tunnels; the soldiers are irritated that they fall through, but are not entirely surprised. The soldiers have accepted the magic as reality, just as they have accepted the chaos of the Vietnam war as normality. Paul Berlin attempts to understand his perspective in Vietnam through telling the story of his experience. Perhaps Paul’s perspective becomes a fantastical one because it gives him something to believe in and something to hold on to outside of the violence he is experiencing in war. In order to understand O’Brien’s novel entirely, it is important to discuss its elements of magical realism and why O’Brien chooses to incorporate them the way that he does. Why is it necessary for these soldiers to set themselves in fantastical elements and to become magical storytellers? How does this offer them control over their own story?
Paul Berlin fancies himself in the war but not of the war. He removes himself from the atrocities several times by saying things like, “Guilty perhaps of hanging on, of letting myself be dragged along, of falling victim to gravity and obligation and events, but not -not!- guilty of wrong intentions” (263). Some of his colleagues and the people who started the war might have bad intentions, but Paul Berlin takes comfort in only being a cog in the machine. This compares to Howard Campbell in Mother Night who warns that we are what we pretend to be.
Early in Going after Cacciato, it is said that there are as many wars are there are people in the wars. I’ve heard the same said for literature; there are as many stories as there are readers. However, Paul Berlin does not see the same individualized experience when it comes to trauma. When he walked through a village south of Chu Lai, “he felt a kind of mild surprise, fleeting compassion, but not amazement. He knew what he would see and he saw it” (254). Because Paul Berlin previously saw media of the devastation, it is as though he were already numb to it. His compassion is not deeply rooted, yet he does long for the victims to know it wasn’t his fault.
I found the narrative of the novel to be deeply complex and discontinuous, yet in the most meaningful way. These overearching elements stood out most poignantly to me as they were progressively revealed by various intersecting aspects of the text–from the characters’ mindsets/decision-making to the non-linear and “unreliable” structure of the story. In my reading experience, I found that the discontinuity of the narrative served to highlight the impacts of trauma experienced by the protagonist, Paul Berlin, while also illuminating its forces on the other soldiers within the storyline.
Paul Berlin’s account of events in the narrative (non-resolutions to cliff hangers, gaps/loose ends in plot, contradictions, etc.) mirrors that of PTSD, wherein a trauma survivor’s functioning of mind and processing of memories in the recounting/recalling of their traumatic experiences is often (to both listeners and to the PTSD survivor) repressed, distorted, disorienting, disjointed with no distinct and clear timeline or total certainty.
Considering Paul Berlin as the “Author” of his story–the one being narrated–in regard to PTSD, the narrative of Paul’s story possibly demonstrates his own processing of his story and subsequently brings to light reasoning behind the narrative complexity and discontinuity.