It's all a Lie

We hear of soldiers going to war and when they return home, they are never the same.  The reason for this may be for a variety of reasons; deaths, poverty, and sickness.  War sucks.  These soldiers suffer PTSD when they come home.  Something as simple as a slam of a door or a stack of plates crashing to the floor can on set the disorder and bring these men and women back to feeling the fear and emotions they had during their time overseas.  Sometimes, their experience is so bad, the disorder can be develop while at war and cause soldiers either to not perform or acquire mental toughness to do whatever it takes to get through it. 

Cacciato, the Road to Paris, Sarkin Aung Wan (his female companion).  They all have one thing in common.  Fake.  Non-existent.  Of course Cacciato was a real person, but he never left nor lead a whole squadron on a wild goose chase thousands of miles to Paris.  This fantasy was all generated in Paul Berlin’s head to escape being completely dragged down by horrifying war events.  Clearly, it got him through even the worst of it.  O’Brien really made us as readers feel, well, I don’t know how to describe it.  The whole story was kind of a stretch so you were reluctant to believe it at first and right about the time when you give in and accept its possibility, O’Brien twists it and it’s all a lie.  Makes you feel dumb, like Cacciato.  It especially sucked when the squad had made it to Paris and everyone was happy. Paul Berlin had even bought an apartment with his companion in Paris and it just gave off good, happy vibes. 

Almost out of the blue, like an aside in a play write, Paul Berlin turns to the audience and just talks to them.

"’This is not a plea for placidness of mind or feebleness of spirit.

It is a plea for the opposite: that, like your father, you would build

fine houses; that, like your town, you would endure and grow and produce

good things; that you would live well. For just as happiness is more than

the absence of sadness, so is peace infinitely more than the absence of

war. Even the refugee must do more than flee. He must arrive. He must

return at last to a world as it is, however much in conflict with his

hopes, and he must then do what he can to edge reality toward what he has

dreamed, to change what he can change, to go beyond the wish or the

fantasy. "We had fed the heart on fantasies," says the poet, "the heart's

grown brutal from the fare." Spec Four Paul Berlin, I urge you to act.

Having dreamed a marvelous dream, I urge you to step boldly into it, to

join your dream and to live it. Do not be deceived by false obligation.

You are obliged, by all that is just and good, to pursue only the

felicity that you yourself have imagined. Do not let fear stop you. Do

not be frightened by ridicule or censure or embarrassment, do not fear

name-calling, do not fear the scorn of others. For what is true

obligation? Is it not the obligation to pursue a life at peace with

itself?’”                                                 (p318)

This is the point where the realization that this whole journey was made up.  The meaning of this work as a whole is one, to show how war sucks, and two, one must cope with adversity. One must adapt and overcome that obstacle and do whatever it takes to move on.

Disapointment

Since the beginning of the novel, I have waited and searched for reasons, even reasons so small, for why Cacciato went AWOL.   "In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war.
 'He's gone away,' said Doc Peret. 'Split, departed.'" (p 2). All the squad knew was that he had left that morning and has his eyes set on Paris, which according to Google Maps (I know they did not have the internet at their disposal) is over 12,000km away and would take roughly 2,500 hours to walk or 1/4 of a year...  So, right from the get go we know this Cacciato character is not the sharpest tool in the shed.  rather, he is as dumb as a fence post and the rest of the novel backs it up.  But, why would a squadron abandon their duties in the war and chase this one guy who clearly didn't do much to benefit them?

Anyways, Cacciato is your typical meat head, similar to Lenny from Of Mice and Men or even Bubba for the movie Forrest Gump.  Though there aren't a lot of passages that include him connecting or talking with members of the squad prior to his absence, there are a couple points in time that Paul Berlin reflects upon his only memories of him.  Cacciato is very, very nice but is unaware of social cues like shut up or stop.  There is one particular scene that is fairly reminiscent of the scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest first meets Bubba.  Bubba tells Forrest everything about shrimpin' and how to prepare them.  When Paul Berlin first meets Cacciato during a hike into the mountains of Vietnam, it is very similar.  It is a quiet night and Cacciato is chewing gum very loud and Paul Berlin is giving him looks of disgust and Cacciato not being all there in the head doesn't pick up on that and continues chewing loudly.  Paul Berlin says something and eventually Cacciato offers him some gum.  Paul Berlin refuses to take his gum because that seems to be his thing and there is no way to get anymore out in the desert mountains of Vietnam.  But, Cacciato assures him that he has "zillions" and multiple flavors...  
"The boy smiled his big smile. 'You like that gum? I got other kinds
if you don't like it. I got--'
 'I like it.'
 'I got Black Jack here. You like Black Jack? Jeez, I love it! Juicy
Fruit's second, but Black Jack's first. I save it up for rainy days, so
to speak. Know what I mean? What you got there is Doublemint.'
 'I like it.'
 'Sure,' the round-faced soldier said, the child. 'Except for Black
Jack and Juicy Fruit, it's my favorite. You like Black Jack gum?'
 Paul Berlin said he'd never tried it. It scared him, the way the
boy kept talking, too loud. He sat up and looked behind him. Everything
was dark."                    (p 214)

After reading that passage, you really get the gist of how this guy is.  The next passage further emphasizes my point on this guy being foolish and just dumb.  No other way to say it.  There's a field that was bombed and it left several massive craters in it and one day it stormed up and poured so much it filled these craters.  Our very bright Cacciato decides he wants to go fishing wish some string, a paper clip, and some left over scrap food...in a large puddle. While the fisherman was away, the rest of the squad were scheming about killing there Lt. because he would make his men go in the tunnels and search them and the last time they did that, two men were killed and the rest were reluctant.  After an argument, the Lt. ended up being the one to go down in the tunnel and the rest debated on dropping a grenade down there and wanted it to be a unanimous decision meaning someone had to go talk to Cacciato.  Paul Berlin lost.

"Give it up."
 "I had some nibbles."
 "No."
 "Little nibbles, but the real thing. You can always tell."
 "Impossible."
 "Patience," Cacciato said. "That's what my dad told me. Have
patience, he says. You can't catch fish without patience."
 "You can't catch fish without fish. Did he tell you that?"
 "Patience."
 "It won't help. It won't change anything."                 (p238)

This sealed the deal for me on how dumb Cacciato is.  The entire story never approaches any reasoning behind Cacciato's absence and leads me to believe that he left because he isn't smart.  Originally, I thought he wanted to get away from the war because soldiers weren't too fond of the objective-less Vietnam War.  But that wasn't the case because he doesn't care or understand.  I could not find any reason why he would leave and these two passages just back up my theory of him leaving because he just woke up one day and wanted to go to Paris.

Characters

Paul Berlin
The POV is third person, but we can only see into the mid of Private First Class Paul Berlin.  He's kind of a shy yet strong willed man.  A passage about one of his first missions show his non-outgoing demeanor and his ability to push through even if it means vegging out.

The road was very dry. It did not kick up dust as he climbed. Solid like summer cement. He did not want to think. The upward climb took energy from his thoughts and sent it to his legs and hips and back, and he climbed without thinking, just climbed, just kept climbing, but then he felt himself slipping. It happened first on the climb to the mountains, slipping out of himself, and, still climbing, he looked up at the summit of the small mountain, climbing but also slipping quietly out of himself, looked up to see the blond-headed lieutenant looking down.              (p 162)

Paul Berlin kept getting lost in himself in order to push himself up to the summit of the mountain to set up post.  Most of the squad were talking to each other along the trail, but PFC Paul Berlin trudged along the red dirt road alone and the Lt. noticed it.  They were all soldiers, however they weren't all good soldiers.  Good soldiers had heart and carried out every task and every mission with pride in their squad and country.  The only thing that keeps Paul Berlin down every so often is himself.  He gets lost in his thoughts of the past and wishes he were there or had done something differently and it hurts him now because the focus is no longer on his and the squad's survival, but selfish with his own actions.

As a reader, Paul Berlin is nothing special and you are confused about his love affair with a teenage girl whom he just met but is already deep in love with.  I have noticed that all other characters have a military nickname except for Paul Berlin and his former Lt. Sidney Martin.  Could this perhaps be foreshadowing Paul Berlin's successful future in which he moves up in the ranks?

Cacciato
So far, very unimportant.  However the novel is named after him for Christ sake! He's just a dumb dude who decided to go AWOL and desert his squad and to prevent future AWOLs, they are going to track him down and punish him.

Doc Peret
The smartest guy in the squad.  Does all the talking within the group and with others in each place they stop.  He is the medic, however he prescribes the new Lt. as just having Nostalgia, or "homesickness" from the war.  The Lt. has been at war so long that it has become his home and leaving it has caused his sickness and frequent spells of dysentery.

AP Worthy?

Sorry for the late post, everyone, but I hope you can understand the laziness a teenager may have when it comes to doing homework on a Friday night.  Nevertheless, all other posts will be on time from here on out.            -C.C.

What defines a novel to be AP level worthy?  Could it simply be worthy because it's written by a credible or noted author? Or it's use of exotic diction or style?  All of this is included and can either add or detract from the worthiness or difficulty of a novel.  However, one thing I think personally that makes a novel AP worthy is if analysis is required to find either a hidden meaning or better understand the meaning of the work as a whole.

Going After Cacciato is AP worthy.  Although Tim O'Brien uses fairly simple language and few words that would be found on a modern SAT test, I would still say it is AP worthy.  I assume at one point in your life you have read a war novel before.  Maybe for a class or maybe for by personal choice.  I know most of the war novels that I have read are more centered around action and engaging the reader through physical violence and that is indeed a great style.  O'Brien has centered on the toll taken on Paul Berlin's emotional state.  For example, the gruesome things you see, your close friends dying, and the constant fear of dying.  All of that on top of everything else other people worry about and deal with everyday.

Disease and infection was a huge problem in the humid tropical forests of Vietnam and it's neighboring countries and it still is to this day.  Imagine having a fever, being dehydrated, and having nothing to cure or help you through whatever may be attacking your immune system.  It would make you go absolutely insane.  Paul Berlin's lieutenant has gone mad and jeopardizes the mission with his insanity.

 Then he licked his lips. "We been kidnapped."

 "Sir?" 

 "Kidnapped," the lieutenant said hoarsely. "Snatched. Bagged and

nabbed, every one of us."

 "I see."

 "No shit, you see! It's the straight dope. We been kidnapped."

 Paul Berlin couldn't help smiling.                                         (p 135)

Paul Berlin knows Lt. has gone mad and the war has made him this way and I think he knows this could be him and this altercation further attracts him to leave with the young girl he met for Paris and never come back to the war.

O'Brien is showing that war isn't just guns and death.  War can mess people up big time and it lasts a lifetime.  For this reason, the fact that the reader must analyze why Paul Berlin makes the decisions he makes, Going After Cacciato is AP worthy and reading a story with multiple simultaneous stories will help on an AP exam.

Great... Three Simultaneous Stories

Don't get me wrong, I find this writing style to be very cool and it can certainly add to the meaning of the work as a whole, especially if they all tie together in some way.  for example, if one story shows how and why a certain character acts towards specific events, and in another story that particular event happens and there is no explanation of why he/she acted the way that they did.  I don't know.  I expected these stories to go in a rotation like pattern (Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 1 , Story 2, Story 3...), but of course it doesn't.  But that just forces the reader to engage in the novel more.  It began 1,2,3 but now it has gone 1,2,3,2,3,1,2,1,3,etc.  No specific pattern.

...Road to Paris
The novel begins with this story, and in my previous post, I showed how O'Brien begins the novel in the middle of the action.  Cacciato has gone AWOL and a squad is sent to retrieve him and it ends up being a long journey full of surprises.  Recently, Paul Berlin, our main character, has crossed the border into Laos and has befriended a young girl between the ages of 12 and 22 and there seems to be foreshadowing of love.  I hope to God there isn't because a soldier (18 or older) realizes she could be 12 years old and is trying to spark a relationship of some sort.  But, that's what war will do to you,  This girl is might also be playing him and using him for a trip to Paris to escape the war front.

My question is why are they still going after Cacciato?  The Lt. is very sick and is barely able to keep up and it's one guy who is very dumb and will probably get himself killed before he walks to Paris.  Murphy knows what's up and he went back to camp less than a week in.

The Observation Post
So far I'm not quite sure of the timing of this story however I do know it's after Cacciato because they are watching him.  To Paul Berlin, this is the longest night of his life, minutes are more than 60 seconds apparently and he checks his watch repeatedly.  The war has affected him and fear has overtaken him.  The little good times he has had go by quickly and the stressful bad times drag on.  Paul talks of his constant fear of war.  No specifics yet, just war.

Death
This series of stories takes place at the beginning of it all.  All the way back to when Paul Berlin gets drafted.  Clearly, this is before Cacciato takes off because he is mentioned in the passages several times as he is there.  In each passage, a member of their squad or battalion is either injured and is dying from infection or wounds or is straight up killed.  I believe this will tie into Paul's fear that he thinks about at night during his watch at the Observation Post.

Hmmm...

Normally, in a war themed novel, they start one of two ways.  Either it starts out at the beginning where the troops reach the destination or are being debriefed or sometimes even before that.  The other is when the author starts the story right in the middle of the action and in this case, Going After Cacciato, we jumped right into the middle.  Cacciato has left for Paris as it is rumored and we don't know why and the Third Squad is sent after him.

My initial reaction to the first couple pages were overwhelming due to the fact of all of the name dropping and the several names of characters that will most likely be important throughout the novel.  I attempted to distinguish them now rather than later before it gets confusing. 

Usually in a novel, the opening scene has a deeper meaning or a significance that is picked up towards the end of the novel.  Knowing there might be some significance, I analyzed the first couple pages and pulled out that death and names are a reoccurring theme or motif.  Everybody was dead and if you weren't, you probably had a disease or infection, specifically dysentery.  

Personally, I wanna know from the get-go why Cacciato has gone AWOL and why the hell any human being would ever deem that walking from Vietnam to Paris is even remotely possible.  Now, I know that Cacciato was referred to as Stupid in almost all ways imaginable, but my favorite was Doc simply stating "He's dumb, that's all." (6)