The Vietnam war was incredibly difficult, and has left many soldiers behind who having faithfully fought for their country lie now forgotten on its streets. This book dives into the depths of this war and the ironies, sorrows, and pains that flow from it. The characters are searching for Caciatto who has gone AWOL. This journey is symbolic of the nature of the war. Does this novel find connection with the soldiers at war today? We are separated from the sufferings that our men and women in arms are facing overseas for our safety and we show very little respect for their sacrifice. How should war be perceived? Should we look upon it as positive? And if we do not then it soldiers be forgotten? This novel follows the lives of a group of soldiers struggling through the war. What lessons are presented which can be applied to today?
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Lora asks so many good questions, I do not know where to begin. I think all soldiers of war can find common ground, the isolation of it, the separation from loved ones, the terrifying thought that other people’s lives lie in your hands and theirs in yours. As civilians we are so separated from the lives of military members. And given the choice, we do not even want to go where courageous soldiers trek, whereas in case of Paul Berlin he did not have a choice. But how we perceive war effects the support we give to the soldiers fighting in it. Whether war is a positive or negative, I have never seen a crowd boo a group of soldiers at their homecoming. We show appreciation, but do we even understand the concept if we have not been in it. This novel gives a glimpse into a range of different feelings of war, some soldiers do not know why they were there, others wanted to be there but have changed their minds, and some just wanted shoot things and blow stuff up. Some many lessons can be applied from this novel, but I think if each person that reads it does not personally gain anything, then they have missed the point.
My grandfather who was a soldier in the Vietnam War went on a mission and never came home. At the time, my youngest aunt was just an infant. Because of the war, my aunt never knew her father, and my sisters, cousins, and I never knew our grandfather. In an instant my grandmother became a young widow with six young children. Being the eldest, my mother was forced to leave school and stay at home to help my grandmother raise her younger siblings. From a personal and maybe selfish point of view, I do not agree with war. Because of war, my grandfather was taken away from me. Any chance that I had to know him and build a relationship with him was striped away. To me, this is most unfair. I feel that war is so impersonal and takes human life so lightly. War makes people forget that every soldier is a human being who comes from somewhere, who has family and friends that he or she has left behind. If only we could all learn to value human life, especially life that is other than our own, maybe war would not exist in this world.
Arguably, one of the greatest works of heroic epic in the history of mankind is Homer’s Illiad. Most people believe that the work is about war but many scholars point toward an alternative reading. The different view comes from the images on the shield of the mighty warrior Achilles. The shield of Achilles contains images of normal life: people dancing, a wedding taking place, a field being ploughed. These are odd images for an epic warriors shield but scholars have speculated that perhaps the shield means something significant about the ways in which we think about war. War and peace are involved in a deadly dance in which humans must engage in battle to preserve a way of life, to protect peace. Indeed, even St. Thomas Aquinas argues that “the sword of war [should be used] in defending the common weal against external enemies.” We fight to protect what we love. But in Vietnam, as in Iraq, we see America enter into battle to fight for an ideology. We battle communism and attempt to defeat terrorism. Yet notice in both wars we attempt to frame them in words of protecting security and ways of life. But that doesn’t mean a man mustn’t fight for what he believes in because he must. He must love and believe, indeed deeply, to gain the courage to fight. And in my opinion, any many who can do such deserves the upmost respect.
These are lots of good questions, but I’ll only focus on a couple of them. Lora is right in saying that the men’s journey after Cacciato is symbolic of the war; every day that were chasing after a hiding target, Cacciato, and never quite catching it. It’s like we said in class today about how Forrest Gump described the Vietnam War—he was always moving and chasing after someone. This war connects to our war today in Iraq because of this constant pursuit and ambiguous target. In Vietnam, the communist North Vietnamese were the main targets, but looked physically identical to the South Vietnamese, and in fact, as we mentioned today, some South Vietnamese were communists as well. This is similar to our war in Iraq, as we are battling insurgents and underground terrorists groups who are difficult to accurately identify, or at least take more effort than identifying them by the differing color of their uniform. This ambiguity and constant, almost hopelessness-inducing pursuit connects Vietnam with the current War on Terror.
I am guilty of not having thought to any great extent about war; unlike Lynn and others I have no immediate family members who were involved in any wars, so I have never had to deal with it on a personal level. War for me has always just been something that I study about in History classes and learn starting and ending dates of, who defeated whom, and what treaty was signed at the end. This novel is helping me to understand the crushing reality of it all. Thousands, wait, no millions and millions of people have lost their lives: fathers, sons, brothers, husbands...and they sacrificed themselves, laid their lives on the line on purpose, and FOR a purpose. The question always remains: what is that purpose exactly? Maybe it is not the same for everyone, maybe it depends on the perspective of the soldier, or maybe it is truly a united force of patriotism that motivates the men who fight for our country. Either way, I feel the need personally to dive deeper into the horrific place that is "war" and try to answer some of these questions so that I can gain a better understanding of this very important part of our lives.
Lora is right, this journey is symbolic of the nature of war. They cannot see any end in sight, or predict what obstacles lay ahead. As the journey continues, there are moments of intense fear, as well as moments of happiness and optimism.
We can look at war as a sort of journey. Certainly it has positive and negative traits, and ultimately exists as a necessity. I imagine every soldier has a different experience and view of war, because life takes each individual on their own, individual journey.
Even though many people will argue that war can be classified as just or unjust; therefore, just wars are positive because it provide positive changes to society. Revolutionary wars are prime example of just wars and exemplify the idea that war is positive. Nevertheless, the essence of war is never just. If soldiers have to kill one another relentlessly, how could that be just? If soldiers have to leave their family and die in the battlefield, how could that be just? If war shows the brutality of human being toward another, how could that be just? To deem a war just is to deem it is acceptable to kill and murder people who are fighting to survive just like you. Furthermore, the term “just war” is relative. For instance, the United States has argued the Vietnam War and Iraq War are just because we are bringing democracy into these countries. However, to many Vietnamese and Iraqis, the war is unjust because the United States has invaded the state sovereignty to establish its own government. There is no telling if a war is just or unjust, but the outcomes remain constant, death, mourning, and human brutality. If these are the constants of war, why would it be a positive thing?
Lora asks if we should look on war as positive and, if we don't, does mean we should not look positively on soldiers as well. She also calls into questions our separation from the soldiers in Iraq today and how that leads to a trivialization of their sacrifice. I have to admit that I am certainly guilty of overlooking the fact that soldiers are putting their lives in constant danger and focus on the fact that I do not agree with the war. I find it easy to place my negative ideas about war onto the soldiers fighting it. Being separated from war by such a great distance and not having any direct link with someone fighting in it makes it very easy for me to sit at my computer and disparage war and all those involved with it. However, reading Going After Cacciato helps me to grasp the day-to-day human story that exists in war and reminds me to not take for granted the difficulties soldiers continually face, regardless of my feelings towards the war they are fighting in.
Lora points out many good ideas about linking Vietnam soldier to today. I feel that Vietnam set a preface for how the American public viewed this war. At the beginning of the Iraqi War, I heard many times “let’s not make this another Vietnam”, which explains the unanimous public support for the troops but not the war, itself. From how O’Brien illustrates the soldiers, it seems that they would resemble each other. I’ve been told the movie Jarhead, is pretty much what troops do over in the Middle East…and how is that much different then going on a pointless trek to get an AWOL soldier, not to mention the twist in the book. Besides from their duties, the rest of their down time soldiers are required to entertain themselves. When there isn’t anything around you like TV, radio, books, etc. then you are forced to turn in ward and your imagination takes over.
The questions that Lora addresses are very difficult to answer, because every situation is different, but I think O’Brien wants the public to understand how different the life was over there. Losing all hope. I can’t comprehend that. Losing total hope, and thinking, ‘today could be the day I die.’ These are all things that do not happen here. They are very unique to a war zone.
I feel very much like Laura when she says, "We are separated from the sufferings that our men and women in arms are facing overseas for our safety and we show very little respect for their sacrifice." I grew up in Abilene where there is a major airforce base, but I still never felt connected to the reality of war. As a military base is separated from a town, with its own housing and some stores, war and the military feel blocked off, even though it's right in my backyard. That's why I think it is so good to have to read books like Going After Cacciato, which expose us to war through first-person accounts.
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