Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Nicole Gilmer

            In his novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain often describes the media barrage which Billy is subjected to. After a particularly tense interview in front of the Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders, Billy reflects that “to talk of such things [as life and death] properly we need a mode of speech near the equal of prayer” and that “silence [is] truer to the experience” (137). This seems to be Fountain’s admission that there is nothing he can write (nor that Billy can say) to give justice to the experience he is trying to describe. Rather than focusing on creating a strong sense of empathy for Billy and Bravo Company, Fountain also tries to create a sense of disgust for the people who cannot or will not empathize with the men. Of course, the reader understands that it is appalling that these men should have to go back to Iraq after they’ve already done so much; but what Fountain also makes clear is that Americans don’t understand the kind of tragedy they all “support” so much. He describes a consumer driven culture that is interested only in the marketability of a person.

            The shop at the stadium where bomber jackets are sold for $679 is a perfect example of the way that Americans love to “support” the winners. The shop worker tells Billy and Mango that they sell about five or six jackets each game but that they sell more when the team wins (31). In the same sort of “no-expense-spared-idol-worship,” copies of Time which Bravo Company has autographed are being sold on eBay while book and movie deals are being bandied about. Billy is easy to like and speaks honestly to both the reader and the other characters in the novel, but the privileged, white Americans surrounding him are unable or unwilling to understand the realities of the war; they are more concerned with buzzwords like “nina leven” and “terror” and how they can own a piece of the tragedy.