Meanwhile, In Billy’s Head by Abby Booher

Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” provides an interesting perspective on ideas of war. While the book can look specifically through the eyes of Americans in terms of war, the novel can also describe very broad topics concerning war as well which play off the irony of the American perspectives. One idea in particular is the sensation of fear which rattles around Billy’s head. Fountain writes, “He gets so tired of living with the daily beat-down of it, not just the normal animal fear of pain and death but the uniquely human fear of fear itself like a CD stuck on skip-repeat, an ever-narrowing self-referential loop that may well be a form of madness” (p. 115). Here, the narrator focuses on how simply being afraid of fear that comes from war can be the most terrifying of all. The speaker likens it to a CD which repeats over and over again. This kind of description is not foreign to novels concerning war. Bausch’s “Peace”, for example, provides an insight to this kind of fear when one of the characters reacts to the war with nervous itch. When the sensation of fear rises within this character, he begins to itch furiously on his arm for no reason. The narrator in Fountain’s novel also notes that it is like a “form of madness”. The fear could almost drive the characters to odd behavior or even insanity. It is also interesting to note how the narrator transitions to the next paragraph in the novel, “So these are Billy’s thoughts while he makes small talk about the war” (115). While this might seem to be a minor sentence, the context gives it great meaning. After all of Billy’s horrid thoughts of fear in war, Billy’s mind returns to the present which consists of Americans lightly chatting about the very thing which could drive him mad. This almost flippant tone causes the reader to pause and notice a message the novel is trying to make in how war, through some people’s eyes, lacks weight and a real respect for its cost.