Imagination in Going After Cacciato

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Title: Imagination in Going after Cacciato Due Date: 24/05/14 There are many war stories and novels that have described the horrors of war itself. Tim O’ Brien’s ‘Going After Cacciato’, however, provides a unique experience to many readers on not just war and trauma, but also how such trauma affected the protagonist Paul Berlin more realistically while moving around the elements of fantasy, which is uncommon among most other war novels. This novel points out that soldiers suffering from the traumas of war turn to their imaginations to cope. However, when reality and fantasy clash, the soldier must struggle with the ugly truth of the past hidden by their imaginary world as well as the real world. In the Observation Post sections, as observed by Dean, war realities were effectively presented in rather narrative approach, which constitute the present time. From the present time Berlin moves back into the past for consolation with his father and family and again in the future into the imagined fantasy. The war stories are ‘mostly chaotic, reflecting the trauma of war on Berlin’s psyche; and the Cacciato sections are pure fantasy, representing Berlin’s flight from that trauma to fantasy in Paris’ (McWilliams) The main character, Paul Berlin, becomes traumatized by the war as his fellow soldiers were killed in action in many dreadful ways; he even unconsciously blamed himself for the death of Lieutenant Sidney which he tried to console as an accident (O'Brien, 247). As a result, many of the events of his past and the listings of the dead squad members are not in order. According to the protagonist himself, “Billy boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie ... The rain fed fungus grew in the men’s boots” (O'Brien, 6). According to Dean, ‘…sequence more important than episodes’ (McWilliams, Herzog). All that Berlin wanted to make sure that he does not want to

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