Abstract

This paper examines Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012) in the context of the 2003 Iraq War. It aims to uncover the novel’s approach to victimhood and accountability for war atrocities. Victimhood is crucial to the rhetoric of war because it legitimizes acts of violence against an opposing party while absolving the first party of any accountability for future wrongdoing. To be a victim is to be entitled to sympathy and compensation, as well as the right to respond, react, and even act aggressively. The argument is made in two constructs, “Aggressors or Sufferers,” which examines the American presence and behaviour in Iraq in terms of their status as victims, and “Accomplices or Innocents,” which investigates representations of Iraqis as war victims or accomplices. This paper argues that Fountain’s novel focuses largely on the victim status of American soldiers and their prolonged anguish, while neglecting the suffering of Iraqis and their victimhood, which results in absolving the Americans of their responsibility as an occupying force, while making the real victims of the war, the Iraqis, responsible for their and the Americans’ agony.