Creative Intellect

From One Mind to Another

         Words play an important part in everyday lives. Without them, it becomes difficult to express your thoughts and feeling. Sometimes, even with words, the real meaning is still lost.
{indentUpon reading the novel, it becomes apparent that the title, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, has a dual meaning. The term, "Halftime", is most closely associated with football, especially with the most recent Superbowl and the half-time show. However, this "halftime walk" is also the "walk" in between all the running he does in war, because Billy is only half done with his military tour. After the break, or his "walk" back to America, he and the rest of the Bravo squad returns to Iraq to finish their terms.
         "What were you thinking?" and "What was going through your mind?" are common suggested interview questions to elicit a "good" response from any interviewee. However, in high-stress times like war, how exactly does a soldier describe his thoughts? As shown in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it's almost impossible. When the reporter asks, "'What were you thinking during the battle?'" Billy Lynn answers the reporter's question with "'I'm not sure.'" (page 3). It's not that Billy isn't sure what he was thinking- he knew exactly what his thoughts were during the battle- but he couldn't find the right words to explicitly describe and express his thoughts in a way that would make sense to anyone besides himself. It's like asking someone how to describe a color without using other colors in the description.
         Additionally, the word cascades throughout the novel show words as Billy hears them, instead of in their conventional form. This shows Billy's disconnect from society: he can not fully understand what everybody is saying; in fact, he can only hear specific words and snippets of each sentence. For example, "Nine eleven" becomes "nina leven", and "terrorist" becomes "terrRist" (page 2). Most of the other words Billy can distinguish are war-related, too. His mind is still set in war mode, not in relaxation mode.
         Describing how you feel, what you thought, or what you saw is not easy without the correct words. Sometimes, even with the correct words, it's next to impossible, as Ben Fountain aptly shows in his novel.