Going After Cacciato

Going After Cacciato is a war novel written by Tim O'Brien and first published by Doubleday in 1978. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. This complex novel is set during the Vietnam War and is told from the point of view of the protagonist, Paul Berlin. The story traces the events that ensue after Cacciato, a member of Berlin's squad, decides to go AWOL by walking from Vietnam to France, through Asia. Cacciato is an Italian word, pronounced "catch-ee-otto," which means "hunted"/"caught" in Italian. Typical of many stories that deal with themes of psychological trauma, Going After... Cacciato contains distinct ambiguities concerning the nature and order of events that occur, which often requires readers to look beyond superficial appearances conveyed by the narrator's language. Its chronology is nonlinear, for most of the book. The main idea of the story is, by O'Brien's estimation, that being a soldier in Vietnam for the standard tour of duty entails constant walking; if one were to put all the walking in a straight line, one would end up in Paris, where Cacciato is going. It is important to note that Cacciato is always portrayed as self-sufficient and happy.
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