English 015 - Americans Abroad
Understanding the Land
Understanding the Land
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Simon Parsons
In Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, the land plays a significant role, especially for Spec Four Paul Berlin. In the wider scope, during the Vietnam War, the land became the ultimate enemy of the American GI’s. Unpredictable, foreign, and rigid, the land gave a distinct advantage to the native Vietcong, who managed to use its depth and natural fortification with “thick, unclipped, untended tangles” (252) against their enemies. In a word, the land was impersonal to the Americans. During the journey to catch Cacciato, starting in Southeast Asia and heading west, Paul Berlin and the soldiers enter the land of Quang Ngai, whose hedgerows “seemed like a kind of smoked glass forever hiding whatever it was that was not meant to be seen” (252). As they surge forward into the territory, Berlin’s comrades remain disconnected to the land while Paul Berlin shows a change: more and more, he seeks an understanding of the land and its people. Essentially, by aiming to know the landscape, he discovers purpose to justify his own desertion from the war. He is unsure what to call the reasoning behind it, but what he did know was that “it had a lot to do with the whole array of things seen and felt and learned on the way to Paris (173). Ultimately, however, Berlin’s idealized awareness of the land is undercut when he realizes that his knowledge is negligible; thus, he conforms to the view held by his comrades: the land as a real and impersonal enemy.
In the battle settings, land mines, booby traps, ambushes, and tunnels show an unpredictability and impersonal quality that alienates the soldiers from the land. While Paul Berlin rides the helicopter into the front lines, he describes the land he passes as “charred pocked mangled country, hopeless country, green skies, and…tangled grasslands and paddies and places he might die” (44). Later, during the scene when Frenchie Tucker is shot when crawling headfirst into a tunnel, “the earth was shaking” (66). Descriptions of the land in these scenes include various adjectives such as mucky, muddy, paddies bubbling with fire (131) and cold. Berlin thought “how funny in the hottest place on earth, hell itself, there was still so much cold” (104). As a result of these Puritan descriptions of the land – the domain of the devil - the soldiers feel that they must tame and overcome the adversity posed by the land. Therefore, for a week straight they destroy twelve tunnels, kill one water buffalo, burn villages, shoot chickens, crush paddies, and tear apart fences (105). Nevertheless, they only further separate themselves from the land and its people, and so it remains impersonal to the soldiers.
The land also reveals the effect of dehumanizing the soldiers, shown when Paul Berlin hikes up the mountain and Sydney Martin admires him. In this chapter, which tells “The Way it Mostly Was,” a drought causes the road to be red and “cracked like clay pottery” (160). On the march, the soldiers become almost machine-like in the land. Berlin marches without thought, only looking at his feet, “the feel of the tendons stretching, the muscles and fluids and tissues moving like a machine” (164). The relationship of the soldier to the land is ruthlessly impersonal at this point, and Paul Berlin is similar to the other soldiers in that he feels no real purpose besides fulfilling standard operation procedures and marching. However, early in the scenes on the road to Paris, Berlin begins to develop an idealistic view of the land.
Paul Berlin describes the land over the first mountain on the journey to catch Cacciato with heavy description: “thick dripping jungle…Club moss fuzzing on bent branches, hard green bananas dangling from trees that canopied in lush sweeps of green, vaulted forest light in yellow-green and blue-green and olive-green and silver-green” (30). This imaginative and artful setting splashed with color is short-lived, however, as it is still hindered by the realities of war: the “heavy grind of the march,” (30) Spec Four Paul Berlin bringing up the rear. Then, when they encounter a river to cross into Laos, the surroundings are similar to that of a stagnant, discolored, and impersonal battle setting: “Things were very still…The river was like a pond without currents…Dusk gave it a murky brown color” (33). Paul Berlin’s understanding of the land remains somewhat minimal, his idealism still marred by the inhospitable qualities of the land.
Once the soldiers free themselves from the jungle, the reality and imagination of Paul Berlin start to blend together, and the result is a fresh romanticism for the land. First, the perspective of the land seems to change out of the jungle. “It was graceful, expansive country…a river ran down from the hills and wound off into a flat meadow filled with wild flowers. There were gazelles in the meadow. The sky was full of birds” (50). However, the instincts of war abruptly return with the brutal killing of the water buffalo, revealing the military goal of taming the harsh land. The next event restores Paul Berlin’s imaginative, idealistic perspective of the land. The joining of Sarkin Aung Wan into the soldiers’ party has a tangible effect on the way Berlin views the land. With the addition of the native Vietnamese girl, his imagination sees clearly and, as a result, “the land was luminous…Pink coral and ferric reds, great landfalls of wilderness, and they moved through it for twelve days at a buffalo’s pace” (60). Paul Berlin no longer feels alienated from the land. Instead he understands Sarkin’s knowledge: “to be a refugee, one must know danger.” (60) Therefore, when the group falls into the tunnel in the road, he is presented with a chance to ask questions and learn the danger that lies underneath the obscurity of the land.
When Paul Berlin sees the living enemy in the tunnel, Li Van Hgoc, he asks several questions about the land: “How did they melt into the land?” “Why was the land so scary –the criss-crossed paddies, the tunnels and burial mounds, thick hedges and poverty and fear?” The VC’s reply, “the land is your enemy,” (86) is significant for Paul Berlin for many reasons. It has roots in the adversity of the land during the war scenes, with the land mines and booby traps and the infection that causes Vaught to lose his arm. Ultimately, however, Berlin’s imaginative optimism prevails from the tunnel, through Sarkin’s guiding force, with a new understanding of the land, its people, and ultimately himself. As Li Van Hgoc told Berlin when looking through the periscope to the surface of the tunnel: “things may be viewed from many angles. From down below, or from inside out, you often discover entirely new understandings” (91). Once Berlin leaves and enters Mandalay he begins to actively seek knowledge in the puzzle of his surroundings through a search for detail, an act completely devoid of regiment and the battle setting. “Walking now and not marching, Paul Berlin paid attention to detail. He saw sunlight that last lasted until dusk…he saw the river darken, the sky turning pink, the city beginning to light itself. And he believed what he saw” (116). Paul Berlin’s idealistic view of the land allows him to believe in and feel a part of its splendor, distanced from the realities of war and its impersonal setting. He continues to see and feel and learn all the things about the land on his way to Paris, giving him purpose and belief in an otherwise purposeless and immoral journey.
Paul Berlin asserts his complete understanding of the land in the chapter, How the Land Was, for “what Paul Berlin knew best was the land” (250). Instead of hostility towards the land, Berlin feels a “powerful wonderment” (250) of the textures, colors, slopes and shadings of the land. He especially recognizes his experience in the paddies, and in so doing, reveals his indifference to the dangers of the land. He states that he confidently pees when he has to pee in the paddies, even though it offers the potential for an infection called elephantiasis (251). Through all this, Berlin still recognizes the “land’s secret qualities,” but, for him now, “it was only a feeling. A feeling of marching through a great maze; a sense of entrapment mixed with mystery…just a feeling” (252). He is confident in his understanding of the land, and ultimately, his relationship to it as a refugee who understands the danger. This sense of purpose leads him finally to his figurative destination: Paris.
In the culmination of Paul Berlin’s imaginative journey, he sits at the Paris Peace Talks with Sarkin. In his speech, he states, “For just as happiness is more than the absence of sadness, so is peace infinitely more than the absence of war. Even the refugee must do more than flee. He must arrive” (318). Paul Berlin comprehends the deeper implications of finding peace in the land, more than just the absence of the realities of war: marching and SOP’s. He recognizes that he must reach a point, however much in conflict with his dreams, that brings together his idealistic world and the harsh reality (318). With the convergence of the real and the imagined, Berlin returns from the chase. This act of return reveals Berlin’s acceptance of his surroundings, interspersed with the horrid acts of war, where the land really is the enemy. It clutches the soldiers when they finally dig their holes, set up the tripflares, and prepare for sleep.
Throughout this journey to understand the land, its people, and himself, Paul Berlin chases a boy, Cacciato. In a way, Cacciato represents courage, morality, and the freedom of will to remain the non-conformist and do what is right when confronted with evil. Berlin’s imagination allows him to entertain these goals but finally his fear for desertion and tainting his family name gets the better of him. Like the American pursuit in Vietnam, Berlin sought meaning and purpose but could find neither in this setting, whose impersonal land was the real enemy.
Posted by on December 15, 2003 at 01:06 PM