English 015 - Americans Abroad
Opposing Forces
Opposing Forces
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Andrew Plowman
Going After Cacciato is an adventure novel about war. Tim O’Brien’s character Paul Berlin is torn between two opposing forces: the desire to please his father and the desire to achieve inner peace. Berlin jumps in and out of reality in an attempt to attain an equilibrium between the duality of his contradicting desires. Sarkin Aung Wan plays the role of his desire to achieve peace in Berlin’s fantasy world as Cacciato represents his hunger for peace in reality. Berlin’s desire to please his father spills over into reality and fantasy.
“[Berlin] would’ve liked showing the medal to his father, the heavy feel of it, looking his father in the eye to show he had been brave…” (pp.81). Berlin’s desire to please his father creates a combination of images he wants to portray to his peers. These images are bravery, honor, and heroism. These war attributes serve as a driving force for Berlin to overcome the ample fear that resonates throughout the novel. “The real issue was the power of will to defeat fear” (pp.81). His overcoming of fear would result in him returning to society and immediately being known as a honorable citizen rather than a feeble war deserter. “I fear the loss of my own reputation” (pp.320).
Berlin finds his thoughts about living in the comfort of peace to be escalating dramatically, gradually tearing him away from his obligations as a soldier. In reality, Berlin envies Cacciato’s ability to find peace in the depths of war. In the World’s Greatest Lake Country, Cacciato fishes in a crater deliberately with no fish. Berlin thinks Cacciato is “[a] dumb kid out fishing in Lake Country” (pp.233), but “[t]his made Paul Berlin smile” (pp.233). He realizes “[a]ll day Cacciato had been fishing with the patience of a fisherman” (pp.238) . Cacciato believes he is actually enjoying a peaceful fishing trip and Berlin idolizes him for finding peace in war.
Berlin strives to be a respectable soldier, but he struggles with thoughts of achieving peace: living a normal life away from the endless destruction of war. When starting his initial chase towards Cacciato, he immediately finds refuge in his dreamlike-fantasy, finding a “country far from war [that is] rich and peaceful” (pp.16). However, Berlin is conflicted between being a soldier and achieving peace by his inescapable sense of guilt. “He liked the sense of peace, all the color and harmony, but even so he felt an urge to get back on the road” (pp172). Berlin imagines standing alone in Paris bathing “[p]eace and harmony and happiness” (pp.312), but he is soon torn away by his soldierly obligations to find Cacciato. His optimistic thoughts are suddenly overrun by his opposing beliefs.
Juggling reality and fantasy, Berlin’s internal tug-of-war between attaining peace and being an upstanding soldier becomes so intense that he creates a false identity. Berlin creates Sarkin Aung Wan, a refugee to represent a spokesperson for his rationale to escape war. She is persuasive in explaining that “as happiness is more than the absence of sadness, so is peace infinitely more than the absence of war” (pp.318). Sarkin Aung Wan never ceases to emphasize the importance of escaping war and tries to persuade Berlin to forget his patriotic obligations and give in to his desire of obtaining peace by living without mortal danger. Later, in a last desperate attempt, Sarkin Aung Wan tries to prepare Berlin to transfer peace from fantasy into reality. “[Berlin] must return at last to a world as it is, however much in conflict with his hopes, and he must then do what he can to edge reality toward what he has dreamed, to change what he can change, to go beyond the wish or the fantasy” (pp.318).
Berlin is then forced to evaluate the circumstances. Berlin comprehends that “[i]f inner peace is the true objective, would I win it in exile?” (pp.320). He understands that Sarkin Aung Wan wants him to abandon his “sense of obligation” (pp.320) and “[r]eputation, as read in the eyes of [his] father” (pp.320). Berlin’s contemplation of his internal limbo is now laid out and he is capable of coming to a conclusion.
Berlin feels the pressure from Sarkin Aung Wan, she being the vehicle to express his contradicting thoughts, and suddenly takes the opposing standpoint. Berlin says, “[O]bligation is more than a claim imposed on us; it is a personal sense of indebtedness” (p.319). This indebted feeling is derived from his goal to be honorable. He realizes that fleeing war will have a detrimental effect on his self-confidence; thus, leaving the feeling of unsettlement to constantly allure him. Peace is unattainable through escaping war.
“We all want peace. We all want dignity and domestic tranquility. But we want these to be honorable and lasting” (pp.320). Berlin comes to find a sense of accomplishment as he suppresses his desire for peace and falls utterly in the hands of his patriotic desires. Berlin, who was once torn between two ideas has accomplished a solution to mend his chaotic mind. “We want a peace we can be proud of” (pp.320). Berlin realizes that to find peace he must prevail against the need for comfort and prove to himself that he is honorable. To be proud is to have found peace.
Posted by aplowman on December 14, 2003 at 09:17 PM