The Vietnam War is undoubtedly an exception to every other US war, particularly because it is the only war the US has ever lost. The loss of the war may have been the direct result of a draft that placed young men in Vietnam, many of whom had absolutely no personal goal other than survival. This sets the stage for Going After Cacciato and its main character Paul Berlin. The book is told in the form of three stories. Sixteen chapters tell the story of the real war, focusing on the deaths of the men of Berlin's squadron, another ten chapters describe a single entire night in which Berlin decides to take the entire watch rather than wake up one of his comrades, and the other twenty the chapters focus on the team's imaginative journey to Paris in pursuit of Cacciato. Berlin essentially spends the entire novel trying to make up his own stories, one a real memory of what actually happened and another, the fictional account he can tell when he gets home. The book is metafictional; explores the process of writing a war story (Calloway 188). In Going After Cacciato Tim O'Brien uses metafiction to examine the confusion of war. O'Brien's narrative structure demonstrates the confusion of war. In no particular sequence, it explores three separate narratives, but only two of these narratives unfold in a logical progression. The observation post's tale begins with Berlin at the start of his night shift and continues until morning. Likewise, Cacciato's chapters follow a chronological order, common in most fictional novels; however, the chapters documenting Berlin's actual war memories intentionally follow no order, but simply catalog his fallen comrades separately. Jack Slay describes these chapters as "a litan...... middle of paper......ar Story': Metafiction in The Things They Carried." Critique 36, No. 4 Summer 1996: 249-57. Rpt . in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 211. Detroit: Gale, 187-91 Web, April 14, 2014. Farrell, Tim O'Brien's Critical Companion. Print.Freeman, Charlotte M. “Critical Essay on Going After Cacciato.” Novels for Students Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Gale Virtual Reference Library 9 April 2014. Herzog, Tobey C. Tim O'Brien. New York: Twayne, 1997. Print.O'Brien, Tim Going After Cacciato: Dell, 1978. Print.Slay, Jack, Jr. "A Rumor of War: Another Look at the Observation Post in Tim's Going After Cacciato O'Brien." Critique 41, No. 1 Fall 1999: n. page Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 211. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 193-96. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 14 April. 2014.