The Things They Carried 833other realities of the war—the damp, the illness,
the monotony, and the ways of surviving the every-
day brutality. Vaught’s self-inflicted wound earns
him a ticket to a hospital in Japan. The soldiers
left behind rely on jokes for their survival, keeping
their distance from each other and making light of
the survivors they envy (like Vaught) or the dead
whose fate they fear the most. The chapter con-
tinues with the central event of Cacciato’s deser-
tion. He has not only run away but has apparently
decided to trek from Vietnam to Paris. Cacciato’s
move is the ultimate, most romantic, attempt to
survive. At the same time (since most if not all of
Cacciato’s flight takes place in Paul Berlin’s mind),
the trip to Paris, the subsequent chase, and the act
of imagining itself represent Berlin’s own basic
attempt to survive.
All Paul Berlin ever wanted was “to live a nor-
mal life, to live to an old age.” But when he arrives
in Vietnam, his routine becomes part drudgery and
part horror. Vietnam can be about passing time on
an endless watch or about watching a friend die
while waiting for the dust-off helicopter. For Berlin,
survival in this environment is only possible by try-
ing not to think, and he finds that “there were tricks
to keep from thinking.” Berlin counts steps. Cac-
ciato collects and chews gum. Eddie Lazzutti sings.
But Berlin also finds that he can think in a different
way: He can imagine.
Before Berlin left for the war, his father’s advice
was to look for the good in the midst of everything.
Though perhaps this is more difficult than it seems,
Berlin manages to focus on the good by dreaming,
or, more accurately, by “pretending he was not in
the war.” The way to survive is not just by counting
footsteps but by imagining the possibilities, whether
it is the mundane thoughts that every soldier has of
what he will do when the war is over or the elaborate
description of tracking Cacciato across continents
all the way to Paris. Even in the imagination, there
is danger, such as when the men are imprisoned in
Tehran, but here surviving demands the gift of sto-
rytelling. Berlin demonstrates a storyteller’s ability
to create tension, resolve conflicts, and paint a pic-
ture of the situation so that his story is a captivating
tale of romantic escape that allows the reader—and
Berlin is both the author and the “reader”—to
believe that the tale could be true, that escape and
survival can be real.
Berlin’s storytelling acts as a survival mechanism
by allowing him both to face difficulties and to
avoid them. Talking about the deaths of Pederson or
Buff is a way of facing them. Imagining the journey
to Paris is a way of forgetting about those deaths.
And some memories, the book implies, need to be
avoided for the sake of peace or sanity. Berlin’s nar-
rative adamantly skirts around the story of Lieuten-
ant Sydney Martin, who, as it turns out, is killed by
his own men, Berlin among them. The soldiers need
to use all of their psychological coping mechanisms,
including imagination, to survive mentally, morally,
and physically.
The narrative focus of Going after Cacciato shifts
between real and imagined action. At times it is hard
to tell what actually has happened and what Berlin
is making up. The novel ends, however, with action
that both demonstrates the reality of the war and
suggests the longings of the soldiers who cannot run
away. After a day in which he sees Billy Watkins die
of fright, and takes part in the death of Lieutenant
Martin, Berlin seems to succumb to fear. He has a
dreamless sleep, as if he is facing some sort of truth
about the war. After he awakes, he and Lieutenant
Corson consider the possible fate of Cacciato, who
has just fled. Though they both agree that Cacciato’s
chances of success are slim, Berlin suggests that
perhaps Cacciato will make it. The lieutenant’s final
words end the book: “maybe so.” In the end, Going
after Cacciato is about keeping the imagination alive,
thus keeping alive the possibility of survival.
Brian Chaneno’briEN, Tim The Things They Carried
(1990)
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories
that Tim O’Brien published in the 1970s and 1980s
after his return from the Vietnam War. The stories
are interrelated and structured such that the collec-
tion reads more like a novel than as a set of discrete
stories.
As a collection, the stories make up the reflec-
tions of “Tim O’Brien,” a character sharing traits
and personal history with the real O’Brien, but one