Abstract

The Middle East is still at the center of the US media and public argument, especially after the US engagement in the most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ben Fountain addresses American involvement in these wars in his novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012). His work received the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. This paper examines Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk vis-à-vis grievability of American and non-American lives in the context of the 2003 Iraq War. It aims at uncovering the differential methods implemented by the author to approach the casualties in Iraq and how he addresses accountability for war atrocities. It draws on Judith Butler’s contention that Western societies treat the lives/deaths of non-Western people in a differential method; the lives of Westerners are prioritized at the expense of the safety and wellness of non-Westerners. The argument is made in three constructs: grievable lives, ungrievable lives, and accountability and culpability in war. This article argues that Fountain’s novel is largely centered on American soldiers’ victim status and their extended suffering. Americans’ deaths are grieved through a large narrative space while Iraqis’ deaths are disregarded and ungrieved.