Fear: A Novel of World War I
Gabriel Chevallier was thinking of his own experiences in World War I when he penned Fear in 1925. It was published five years later to some outrage and was then suppressed during World War II as an anti-war novel. “The great novelty of this book,” Chevallier writes in the preface, “is that its narrator declared: I am afraid.” Fear is indeed a novel theme in this otherwise ordinary novel of a young man’s experiences in the trenches. The main character, Jean Dartemont, sets off for war full of idealism and enthusiasm. What he finds is more horrific than heroic. When an injury sends him from the battle lines, he finds himself confronting ignorance, often deliberately so, as to the true situation at the front. He dares to speak the word that no one will. Facing disbelief and righteous anger, Dartemont tells them of the slaughter and the fear. Chevallier brings a visceral realness to Dartemont’s experiences, one that wrung me emotionally. Fear is a book I read slowly, not because it didn’t catch my attention, but because the book brought me so close to the war that I had to pause every now and again to remember that I live in peace.
