Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Themes

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Themes

Authenticity

In addition to a serious case of PTSD, our hero in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is suffering from some potent '90s teen angst. He would fit right in with the store clerks from Empire Records, wi...

Brotherhood

Band of Brothers? Well, not exactly, but the sense of love and brotherhood that the guys in Bravo share with each other is a major theme in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. These guys declare their...

Dissatisfaction

Billy has been through a lot. In Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, he's seen hell on earth and come back to America for his victory tour, but all he can focus on is how dang disappointed he is in ev...

Warfare

Even though Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a book about a war hero, the actual warfare we see is brief and fleeting. We catch only vague glimpses of Billy's experiences in flashbacks to a battl...

Separateness

Ever since going to war, Billy finds he can't help but have a kind of us-versus-them mentality when it comes to the civilians he loves back home. They haven't done the things he's done, or seen the...

Religion

Woof. Religion can be a heavy subject. And Billy? Billy's got questions. The hero of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was raised in Texas, the land of evangelists, so although he's not one of the pe...

Society & Class

For a book filled with cussing, horny dudes, and football, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is more of a statement about societal woes and economic unfairness than it is a story about war or sports....

Patriotism

Immediately after the tragic events of "nina leven", as Ben Fountain likes to call it in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Americans experienced a resurgence of patriotism that bordered on the fanat...