I read this book after reading (and loving) The Things They Carried. This book in some ways is very familiar and similar to that. Some of the same characters and similar stories are told. Yet they are told in a different format where reality and the main character’s hallucinations are mixed together. The quote at the start of the book reads, “Soldiers are dreamers,” Siegfried Sassoon.
Paul Berlin is the narrator of the hunt for Cacciato, a deserted soldier from the Vietnam War. While Paul talks about the tragedies and deaths of those around him, and the cold realities of war, he also describes the search and the hunt for Cacciato who is on his way, walking straight to Paris.
Going After Cacciato mixes the real with the unreal in ways that I can imagine a lot of soldiers did as a defense mechanism and a way to protect themselves against what was going on around them. The narrator questions the war and his feelings about it and what is happening around him. There are a lot of moral issues and mixed emotion expressed through the narrator.
Tim O’Brien has a very straight, direct writing style that I enjoy reading. His stories about Vietnam seem so real and hard that it can be difficult to read them and for that reason I liked the mixing of the journey outside of Vietnam. It provided some adventure that was a relief to the intensity of war. Yet, as I’ve stated my preferences before, I like reality more than not so I think I preferred The Things They Carried if I was to pick between the two.
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