Going After Cacciato is not a bildungsroman. Paul Berlin, the main character, struggles with his fear throughout the novel. He never grows out of it, he never changes and he never matures. He is a static character. His fear consumes him whether he is in battle or relatively safe at the observation post. He goes back and forth from reality to fantasy in order to deal with this fear. He repeatedly talks about not wanting to die and wanting to go home to his father. He explains that he almost died once, but he was not brave enough to go into the tunnel to retrieve his fellow soldier. His imagination is what keeps him able to survive. He even rationalizes the trip to Paris by going through the objections people back home will have to his story, if he lives to tell it. He says, “Sure, there were always the skeptics. But he would explain. Carefully, point by point, he would show how these were petty details. Trivial, beside the point” (125). Paul Berlin ends the novel the same as he began when it started; a very frightened young man stuck in a war he constantly escapes through chasing Cacciato.