On Colonial Consciousness In Going After Cacciato

Tim O'Brien is widely acclaimed as one of the major representative writers of Vietnam War Literature.Going After Cacciato is acknowledged as one of the most successful novels he has ever published which changes the linear narrative,spreads past,present and future into every chapter and creates a new kind of novel form of the war.Critics at home and abroad scrutinized the novel from various aspects,mostly from its anti-war theme and writing technique,yet the research connecting American exceptionalism and orientalism ideologies with the novel is not much.This thesis is an attempt,from a new perspective of exceptionalism and orientalism,to analyze the author's post-colonialism in Going After Cacciato.The research is based on Orientalism and American Exceptionalism and makes an analysis on the image of Vietnamese and American soldiers.The study finds that Tim O'Brien is deeply influenced by Orientalism and American Exceptionalism and makes an insulting description of the Vietnam people in the novel.Under his description,the Vietnamese are ignorant,servile and ugly,which is a complete contrast to those American soldiers who are depicted as courageous,innocent and loyal.In the opinion of the author,those soldiers should not be blamed since they bring modern civilization and high-tech to Vietnamese and save them from ignorance and therefore can be praised as the Savior taking the mission from God.What's more,the author,by the narration of the main characters,recollects certain periods of imperial history of the United States.Although Going After Cacciato expresses the author's anti-war attitudes,after reading the novel carefully,we can find that the colonial consciousness and imperialism is in the novel everywhere.Studying the novel under the post-colonial theory provides a new perspective to the research on war literature in future.