Going After Cacciato

Literary form: War novel
First published: 1978
Literary period: Late twentieth-century American literature
Region / tradition: United States / Vietnam War and imagined transcontinental settings
Original language: English

What happens in this work?

Going After Cacciato centers on Paul Berlin, a young American soldier in Vietnam who is frightened, inexperienced, and trying to understand what war requires of him. Another soldier, Cacciato, leaves the unit and announces an impossible-sounding plan to walk to Paris. The squad goes after him. Lieutenant Corson is tired and ill; Oscar Johnson values military order; Doc Peret uses reason and probability; Stink Harris is aggressive; and the other soldiers carry different mixtures of loyalty, fear, habit, and exhaustion. Their pursuit begins in a recognizable war landscape, but it soon opens into a journey across countries, tunnels, cities, deserts, prisons, and borders. Sarkin Aung Wan, a Vietnamese refugee, joins the travelers and becomes Paul Berlin’s companion and challenger. She asks him to imagine choosing life outside the military path that seems to control him.

The novel does not present that journey as a straightforward report. One thread places Paul at an observation post during a long night, looking outward and building possibilities in his mind. Another returns to violent memories from the war: deaths, patrols, fear, confusion, and the squad’s earlier pursuit of Cacciato. A third follows the extended road to Paris. These threads interrupt and revise one another. The imagined journey gives Paul room to ask questions that ordinary military language suppresses. Could he leave? Is following an order the same as acting morally? Does fear make a person cowardly, or is fear a truthful response to danger? The fantasy does not simply make war pleasant. It contains arrests, arguments, betrayal, coercion, and the recurring pressure to capture Cacciato.

Paris appears to offer distance from the war, but arrival cannot settle the conflict. Paul imagines a peaceful life with Sarkin while also imagining the squad’s demand that the mission be completed. Cacciato remains difficult to understand because he is less a fully explained spokesman than a figure who keeps moving beyond the unit’s accepted limits. The ending returns readers to uncertainty about what occurred, what Paul invented, and what he can actually choose after his night of imagining. That uncertainty is purposeful. The novel does not ask students to solve the journey as either all real or all fantasy. It asks what the act of imagining allows Paul to face, postpone, rehearse, or refuse. His mind creates an alternative route, but moral freedom still requires action in the world where he wakes.

What was happening when it was written?

Tim O’Brien published Going After Cacciato in 1978, not the catalogue’s inherited 1975 date, and it received the 1979 National Book Award for Fiction. O’Brien served in Vietnam, but this book is a novel rather than a transcript of his service. Its strange travel route draws on quest stories, desertion narratives, war fiction, and the freedoms of imaginative storytelling. Students should not treat Paul Berlin’s fear as a diagnosis or Cacciato’s plan as a simple political program. The Vietnam War context matters, including conscription, chain of command, civilian displacement, and the moral pressure placed on young soldiers, but the book’s structure keeps asking how any war story is made from memory, desire, and missing knowledge.

Who matters, and why?

Paul Berlin

Paul is afraid and deeply observant. He wants to behave well but does not have a stable definition of courage. His imagined journey lets him test escape, love, duty, and refusal without immediately paying their real-world price. That mental work is meaningful but incomplete.

Cacciato

Cacciato deserts with a simple destination and an almost impossible confidence. Because readers receive little direct explanation from him, other characters turn him into a fool, criminal, dreamer, target, or example. His distance exposes what the squad assumes cannot be chosen.

Sarkin Aung Wan

Sarkin is displaced by war and enters Paul’s imagined route as guide, companion, critic, and possible partner. She argues for escape more clearly than Paul can. Readers should also notice that Paul’s fantasy shapes her presentation and limits how independently the narrative can know her.

Lieutenant Corson and Oscar Johnson

Corson is exhausted and often uncertain, while Oscar speaks more firmly for military hierarchy and completing the mission. Their different forms of authority show that command is not one simple voice. Paul must decide how much moral weight rank, competence, and confidence deserve.

Doc Peret and the squad

Doc uses probabilities to make extreme events seem measurable, while Stink Harris, Eddie Lazzutti, and the others respond through habits developed under pressure. The group can protect members and also enforce violence. Its arguments externalize choices Paul struggles to name alone.

Big ideas to track

Imagination can rehearse freedom

Paul creates a route far beyond the battlefield and tests choices unavailable in ordinary patrol life. Imagination is not useless escapism, because it reveals alternatives and values. It is also not final freedom, because imagined refusal does not automatically become lived action.

Courage is not the absence of fear

Paul repeatedly studies his own fear and worries that it disqualifies him. The novel separates bodily fear, social shame, obedience, endurance, and moral courage. A person may act while terrified and may also obey because choosing independently feels even more frightening.

Duty can conflict with moral judgment

The chase treats Cacciato as a problem that orders should solve, but the longer journey makes the mission increasingly strange. Following the squad preserves belonging. Questioning it forces Paul to decide whether responsibility means compliance or conscious choice.

War stories mix fact, memory, and desire

Observation-post scenes, remembered deaths, and imagined travel refuse a neat boundary. The structure does not mean nothing is true. It teaches readers to ask what each version explains, what it protects Paul from, and what evidence remains unresolved.

How the writing works

Three interwoven time lines

The night watch, war memories, and road to Paris interrupt one another. Each thread changes the meaning of the others. The observation post becomes a workshop for possibility, while violent memories prevent the journey from floating free of consequence.

Quest structure

A military pursuit expands into a cross-continental quest with guides, underground passages, prisons, tests, and a distant city. Familiar adventure patterns make movement exciting, then expose the oddity of treating a deserter’s capture as heroic completion.

Uncertainty without a final solution

The novel provides clues that the long journey is imagined but does not reduce every scene to a code. Ambiguity keeps attention on Paul’s mental and moral labor. Students should explain the effect of uncertainty instead of merely labeling events real or unreal.

Repetition of possibility language

Paul and Doc repeatedly consider what might happen, what is probable, and what can be believed. Conditional thinking can open ethical alternatives or postpone decision. Tracking it shows when imagination becomes insight and when it becomes shelter.

Moments to notice while you read

Cacciato announces the walk to Paris

What to notice: Separate what Cacciato actually says or does from the squad’s labels and predictions about him. Mark why the destination sounds impossible to each listener.

Why it matters: The departure creates the novel’s central alternative: one soldier acts as though the war’s enclosed map can be left. Everyone else’s response reveals an assumed boundary.

Paul Berlin at the observation post

What to notice: Track the physical night around Paul, the memories that interrupt it, and the moments when possibility begins to turn into a detailed scene.

Why it matters: The post gives the novel a mental present. Readers can see imagination being used to organize fear rather than receiving the Paris journey as an unquestioned report.

The squad's early pursuit and war memories

What to notice: List what Paul remembers clearly, what remains confused, and how death or fear changes the soldiers’ language with one another.

Why it matters: These memories give the fantasy a moral weight. The road to Paris grows from violence Paul cannot simply leave outside the story he wants to tell.

The fall into the tunnel and meeting Sarkin Aung Wan

What to notice: Notice how the route changes from military pursuit to quest, what Sarkin knows, and which details reflect Paul’s hopes about rescue and companionship.

Why it matters: The underground passage makes transition visible. Sarkin opens an alternative future while also reminding readers that Paul’s imagination controls much of her narrative space.

Arguments about continuing the mission

What to notice: Compare Corson’s uncertainty, Oscar’s commitment to order, Doc’s reasoning, Sarkin’s case for escape, and Paul’s shifting position.

Why it matters: The group debate turns an internal conflict into voices. Paul hears several definitions of duty and cannot pretend that obedience is the only imaginable choice.

Arrest, confinement, and escape along the route

What to notice: Track who makes decisions under state power, how the squad behaves when it loses control, and whether escape changes its treatment of Cacciato.

Why it matters: The imagined journey does not remove coercion. Repeated confinement shows that crossing distance alone cannot produce freedom while the mission’s controlling logic remains intact.

Paris and Paul's possible life with Sarkin

What to notice: Identify the ordinary details of the life Paul imagines, then mark every reminder that the squad and Cacciato remain unresolved.

Why it matters: Paris gives peace a concrete shape rather than a vague wish. Its fragility shows that Paul cannot keep a private future without deciding what he will refuse.

The confrontation with Cacciato and return to uncertainty

What to notice: Compare the imagined mission’s demand for completion with the observation-post present. Ask what Paul has learned and what he still has not done.

Why it matters: The ending denies a simple escape or verdict. Paul’s imagined journey has clarified alternatives, but the difficult step from possible choice to actual choice remains open.

Questions to test your understanding

Answer in your own words. Then point to a specific moment in the work that supports your answer.

What does the walk to Paris allow Paul Berlin to imagine that ordinary military language does not?
How do the observation post, war memories, and journey thread correct or complicate one another?
Why does the novel give Cacciato less interior explanation than Paul or Sarkin?
Choose one debate among the squad. Which definition of duty does each speaker use?
How does Sarkin expand Paul's sense of possibility, and how does his control of the imagined story limit her?
Where does fear help Paul perceive danger accurately, and where does fear prevent a moral decision?
Does imagining an alternative count as courage? Explain both what the journey accomplishes and what it cannot accomplish alone.

The K.Jung School of Standardized Review (KSSR)