Going After Cacciato

Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien

Disjointed Narrative Structure

• The novel does follow one linear plot, but is punctuated by various asides or anecdotes
• Characters in the story are not introduced until much later in the story, or are never explained
• The storyline alternates between the road to Paris and the Observation Post, where Paul Berlin guards his squad, and "in effect, the time span of the novel is the length of time of Berlin's watch, roughly from midnight to dawn" (Wiedemann 142)
• These two locations have separate plot lines that become interconnected at more than one point

About The Author, Tim O'Brien

"The Field"

Nicknames and the Rejection of Reality

• While driving around, we decided that we were bored and looked for trouble, which Caleb is good at finding since he’s a football player
• Michael suggested that we go to the field, but I said we should head over to Olivia’s
• Olivia was staying in North Carolina with some family but Michael said it was no biggie and that we could stop by, since he has cousins a couple towns over from Asheville

• Throughout the novel, nicknames are given to the various characters in favor of real names.
• By rejecting the reality of names in favor of nicknames to escape the harsh realities of war, the characters seek to separate themselves from the lives they lead in actuality.

Class Activity

• O'Brien is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and most of his novels are set during that time period
• His novels come with a mystical feeling, like war stories
• Also wrote the book The Things They Carried
• The book Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award
• He was born in 1946 and is currently alive

What's the craziest, most unbelievable thing you've done?

Book Overview

What Makes it Experimental?

Chapter Repetition and Meaning

A Picture of Tim O'Brien

Novel Overview

Plot Summary

• An unreliable narrator
• The disjointed and out-of-order storytelling
• A feeling of distrust towards the American Armed Forces (traditionally a favored higher authority)
• The book's chapters and layout seek to confuse the reader
• Major textual changes seek to provide emphasis or some kind of feeling towards the plot

Class Activity

Distrust of Higher Authority

Unreliable Narrators

• The novel is written in Third Person Omniscient, with an unnamed narrator that focuses on Paul Berlin in past-tense
• The theme of the novel is similar to that of a fairy tale, with the group encountering various mystical trials along the route to Paris
• The tone of O'Brien is casual
• The style of writing is simple, filled with things like colloquial speech
• Because of the mature nature of the plot, the intended audience would probably be adults

• The book follows the plight of Paul Berlin and his squad as they track an AWOL soldier named Cacciato, who is attempting to walk to Paris from Vietnam
• The book takes place during the Vietnam War

What's the craziest, most unbelievable thing that you think you've done?

Emphasis on Belief and Imagination

The Feeling of Incredulity

• In the novel, the highest authority is the United States Armed Forces
• The reader is led to distrust the traditional authority figure in the presentation and actions of the soldiers their superiors

The Inability To Remember Correct Facts

• To differentiate between time and location, chapters normally name locations or actions to preface the story
• There are ten chapters titled "The Observation Post," and two titled "Going After Cacciato"
• Most other chapters are titled with "To Paris" (like "Tunneling to Paris" or "On The Lam to Paris")
• This does not make the story cohesive or reliable, and instead confuses the reader as to what is the true reality

The Impossibility of Paris

World's Greatest Lake Country

Throughout the novel, Paul Berlin second-guesses himself, and provides the reader with a sense of doubt by providing facts that are possibly wrong.

Throughout the novel, the narrator describes how Berlin believes that the situation cannot end in certain ways

• "Paul Berlin tried hard to figure a way out. A miracle, he kept thinking. Some saving grace" (O'Brien 228).

After Berlin's panicking and internal bargaining, the storyline continues to fit his desires, allowing the squad to come out of various impossible situations, and questioning the reality of the story. Due to this barganing mechanism working, and changing the setting, the reader "begins to wonder... not simply where fact begins and fiction leaves off but, more intriguingly, which of the two--fiction or fact--derives from the other" (Anderegg 17).

As the novel begins, the narrator and the characters remark about the impossibility of Cacciato ever reaching his destination, Paris, from the jungles of Vietnam.

• "Humping to Paris, it was one of those crazy things Cacciato might try... It could't be done. It just wasn't possible, and it was silly and sad" (O'Brien 8).

As the story progresses, however, the impossible journey unfolds, and the narrator and various characters are proven wrong many times when they remark that something is impossible.

At some point, Paul Berlin recounts a story of how Cacciato fished in the flooded craters left from mortars

• "'Don't you see?' Paul Berlin said. 'It's a joke. Lake Country, it's Doc's way of joking. Get it? Bomb craters filling up with rain, it's just comedy. No lakes, no fish.' But Cacciato only smiled and held his finger to his lips" (O'Brien 237).

This mystical description of Cacciato mirrors the ridiculousness of Cacciao's flight to Paris

The Interview

Lieutenant Corson

The Description of Moscow

• The leader of the squad, Lieutenant Corson, is an terribly bad leader left over from the Korean War.
• Throughout the novel, Lieutenant Corson expresses his wishes to leave the war, and his duty, behind, in favor of a whimsical life away from America.
• By rejecting duty, he shows the lack of trust that could be put into the soldiers in the novel.

• At some point, Paul Berlin meets his superiors for a promotion
• "The major moaned and leaned back. Beside him, indifferent to it all, the captain in tiger fatigues unwrapped a thin cigar and lit it with a kitchen match. Red acne covered his face like the measles... The third officer sat silently. He hadn't moved since the interview began" (O'Brien 267).
• These superiors, characterized by their lack of sanity and brains, forces the reader to question how capable the Armed Forces really are, when it is normally expected that they are the best of society.

• After traveling through Nepal and what is now Kazakhstan by train, the squad arrives in Moscow
• The narrator's comments describe St. Petersburg, however:
• "The Kremlin stared at the Baltic Sea, sleeping with one eye open. The night was quiet and damp" (O'Brien 229)
• The inability for the narrator to keep up with basic facts leads the reader to question whether or not the squad actually got to Moscow

The SECRET of Lake Country

"Back to Reality"

How Time is Kept

The journey to find Cacciato is, to the squad, an escape from the harsh realities of war, and harsh realities in general. Only by catching Cacciato can the men return to the reality that once was.

• "'And what happens if you find him? If you catch him? What happens then?' 'Back to reality,' he said. 'If we catch him, then it's back to the realms of reality'" (O'Brien 114).

As the novel goes on, the men lose their grasp on the assumed reality, that of war, in favor of a whimsical reality, one that involves traveling around the world and having a good time.

When Paul Berlin recounts Cacciato's fishing in Lake Country, the text formatting changes to provide emphasis on the secretive nature of what was occurring during the chapter

• He moved his shoulders as if working out a knot, then he settled back and watched the bobbing SECRET" (O'Brien 238).
• "Paul Berlin watched as Cacciato played with the line as though feeling for life at the other end. He was smiling. His attention was entirely on the bobbing SECRET in Lake Country" (O'Brien 240).

• Throughout the novel, time is kept by Paul Berlin while he guards the Observation Post.
• As time goes on at the Observation Post, the novel continues.
• The night time could be reflective of the dreamlike story of Paul Berlin, who recounts the story as his squad sleeps.

Chapter Meaning and Repetition

Changes in Tense

"The Field"

• There are ten chapters titled "The Observation Post," and two titled "Going After Cacciato"
• Most other chapters are titled with "To Paris" (like "Tunneling to Paris" or "On The Lam to Paris")
• To differentiate between time and location, chapters normally name locations or actions to preface the story

A Critical Comparison of the Novel

Excerpt Analysis

"The style of the book has been compared to Hemingway's style in the use of clear, crisp sentence rhythms, and the theme... O'Brien's book has also been likened to Garcia Marques's work, especially One Hundred Years of Solitude ( 1967), because of the reliance on magical realism, the blending of realistic detail with fantasy" (Wiedemann 141).

• After soccer practice during winter break, I drove to Winter Springs to see my friend Derek
• I didn’t bring a change of clothes so I wore my dirty soccer shorts, a blue jacket, and a shirt with a tiger on it
• I hadn’t seen Derek, Michael, or Caleb in a while
• Us four drove around looking for smoothies at around eight
• We found out that Planet Smoothie closes early on Sundays

"He tried to imagine a proper ending... Not impossible, of course. It might still be done. With skill and daring and luck, Cacciato might still slip away and cross the frontier mountains and be gone. He tried to picture it. Many new places. Villages at night with barking dogs, people whose eyes and skins would change in slow evolution and counterrevolution westward, whole continents opening up like flowers, new tongues and new times and all roads connecting to Paris. Yes, it could be done" (O'Brien 23).

Excerpt Analysis

To show a change in pace, and to present the reader with a fast-paced narrative, the tense changes from past to present at certain points in the novel

• "Faster now. The train sweeps along the curve of a river, rattles over an iron viaduct, through wet meadows and woods, past an old farmhouse with a rolled red-tile roof and sagging walls... It is a blur" (O'Brien 289).

The feeling this evokes is one of excitement and desire, something not present in most of the novel

"The Field"

The Biles

"Oscar's birthday had been in July. In August, Billy Boy Watkins died of fright-no, June. That was in June. June, the first day at the war. Then, in July, they'd celebrated Oscar's birthday with plenty of gunfire and flares, and they'd marched through the sullen villages of the Song Tra Bong, the awful quiet everywhere, and then, in August, Rudy Chassler had finally broken the quiet. That had been August. Then-then September. The order of things-chronologies-that was the hardest part... But what was the order? How did the pieces fit, and into what months? And what was it now,-November-the-what?" (O'Brien 47)

The medic of the squad, nicknamed Doc, dispenses unorthodox medicines and advice, and is known to be an odd intellectual. He makes reference to something called "the biles."

• "You got an excess of fear biles... And my theory is this: Somehow these biles are warping your sense of reality. Follow me? Somehow they're screwing up your basic perspective, and the upshot is you sometimes get a little mixed up. That's all" (O'Brien 28).

Because one of the characters openly says that the main character being followed may not being in the correct reality, the leader is led to question the basis of the book from the beginning of the novel.

Works Cited

• Anderegg, Michael, ed. Inventing Vietnam: The War in Film and Television. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1991. Questia School. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
• O'Brien, Tim. Going After Cacciato. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Print.
• Wiedemann, Barbara. "American War Novels: Strategies for Survival." War and Peace: Perspectives in the Nuclear Age. Ed. Ulrich Goebel and Otto Nelson. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech UP, 1988. 137-44. Questia School. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.

• We drove over to Olivia’s but she wasn’t home
• So we drove to a Buddhist Temple hidden in Winter Springs and talked about how we should ring the huge bell in the middle of the sanctuary, but nobody dared anyone and we just thought about the story where Isiah stole the sign
• After that we went to the field where the Winter Springs kids get stuck in mud and did donuts near the apartment complexes in Caleb’s mom’s old minivan
• Derek said I looked like an Italian Eskimo and propped up my Chinese Man pillow next to me and pretended to share a McDonald’s smoothie with it

Between the Observation Post and the Journey

The novel's plot shifts between two versions of Paul Berlin, one on watch at night in Vietnam, and one trailing Cacciato towards Paris.

• "In his tower by the sea Paul Berlin considered the possibilities. A miracle, he thought. An act of high imagination-daring and lurid and impossible. Yes, a cartoon of the mind... A miracle, he kept thinking... And then it started-an explosion, the great iron door shattering... So now he ran. A miracle, he thought, and then he closed his eyes and made it happen. And then a getaway car-why not? It was a night of miracles and he was a miracle man. So why not? Yes, a car" (O'Brien 242-243).