著者

田吹 香子

出版者

福岡女子大学

雑誌

Kasumigaoka review (ISSN:13489240)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.47-60, 2008

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Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacdato is one of his so-called 'Vietnam war trilogy,' but it differs from the others, If I Die in a Combat Zone (1975) and The Things They Carried (1990), because of its unique structure and imaginative story. Although this novel has three separate kinds of chapters, 'The Road to Paris' chapters cannot be independent themselves, and they are often interrupted by his war memories. This structural invasion is brought about by the protagonist Paul Berlin's confusion which is caused on the borderline between the old American dream and the turbulent social situation in 60s America. In the Vietnam War, Billy Boy Watkin's death makes Berlin realize that American fathers of the good old Protestantism can no longer teach their sons how to survive in the new-type of war. On the contrary, the fathers accuse their sons of cowardice, and Abraham-like Lieutenant Sidney Martin representing American fathers leads soldiers as Isaac to the hilltop to offer them up as sacrifices for their God, that is, the United States of America. Once Berlin's conventional view begins to shatter, his fantasy also comes to be unstable. 'The Road to Paris' fantasy assumes a nomadic atmosphere as well as his ancestors' Westward Movement plot, and Berlin as 'an author' cannot put a clear distinction between himself and his characters. He sees Sarkin Aung Wan, Li Van Hgoc and an executed man superimposed on his situation, though in this novel the postcolonial idea of 'fusion' has not been accomplished yet. This metaphysical chaos of Berlin's is best represented in a deserter, Cacciato. His elusive image is also reminiscent of the indefinable Vietnam War and American society of the 60s, and it stands for the idea of the coming Postmodern era, especially of Jacques Derrida's idea, 'differance.' Likewise, Berlin, who sees Cacciato as a person to lead him, intends to maintain his aporia with both of his choices, an obligation to his homeland and freedom from it; in the peace talks with Sarkin, his alter ego representing freedom, he does not reach any agreement and they are split apart on either side of the Eurasian continent. Yet, here, some hints of Berlin's defiance against the modern civilization are suggested; his indecisiveness implicitly rejects self-determination characteristic of civilized society, and he also refuses to work as a soldier of America by letting Cacciato free. In addition, with Lieutenant Corson's suggestion of Cacciato's survival, the tentative end of Berlin's fantasy seems to make him go back to the starting point of his journey. This circular form of his narrative is a sign of farewell to the linear modernistic narrative. Rewriting the 60s in such a complicated style from the point of view of the 70s, Berlin and the author O'Brien might have tried to preserve secretly what they wanted to insist, and showed a faint but critical attitude toward the amnestic 70s when American people refused to talk about the Vietnam War.