Going After Cacciato.4

This novel, I believe, is a buildungsroman in a backwards kind of way. I believe this novel "starts" (in a linear sense) with the characters in a lost, almost wandering kind of mindset. There was no direction other than the straight lines to no where that were walked day by day by each solider in Vietnam. However, by the end of this novel, I believe the soldiers have digressed into a seeing of reality- of their harsh reality. Like being in a hell with fog, and then suddenly the fog lifts itself away and everything terrible and horrible is seen clearly. However, the characters aren't scared or in pain, they are simply knowledgable. And it is that knowledge that brings about their coming of age, their ah-ha moment within the novel. See life for what it is, and not simply living in a ditch of wandering despair sounds terrible, but in this novel is a way in which the men can come to psychological and physical terms with the horror before them. They are able to now cope with problems, however harsh their coping mechanisms are, when before they were only able to see as far as the barrel of their guns could take them.