English 015 - Americans Abroad
Explosions
Explosions
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Meg Gray
The soldiers in "Going After Cacciato" are constantly on the move in both the reality of battle and the fantasy of the road to Paris. Then Paul Bowles uses the same event, an explosion, to break up the monotony of the trail in both settings. The effects of the explosions in the two settings contrast completely.
In the front lines, “the lull continued. The days were the same” (p. 104). The repetition was getting to all of them. “The men bickered and fought. Caution became skittishness. Irritability became outright meanness, then worse” (p. 105). They went from village to village shooting and burning, but “the lull did not end” (p. 107). The soldiers needed something to happen before they completely fell apart. So “when Rudy Chassler hit the mine, the noise was muffled, almost fragile, but it was a relief for all of them” (p. 110). This explosion caused a death, but it also served its purpose. It broke up the monotony of the trail.
The road to Paris is had the same repetition. “Two days, three days and a single clay trail kept taking them up” (p. 16). The soldiers, however, didn’t mind this monotony. “For Paul Berlin, who marched last in the column, it was hard work but not unpleasant. He liked the silence… No fears of ambush, no tapping sounds in the brush” (p. 16). Cacciato uses an explosion to shatter the security of his pursuers. By setting a booby trap with a smoke bomb he is able to trigger all the fear and pain of being in battle. “Stink Harris was bawling. He was on his hands and knees, chin against his throat. Oscar and Eddie hadn’t moved. ‘Had us,” the lieutenant was chanting to himself. Senile-sounding” (p. 20). Cacciato’s prank connects the horror of the war to Berlin’s fantasy journey.
Posted by on December 02, 2003 at 01:36 PM