Monsters under the bed. Boogie men. The dark. When you're a little kid, fears are pretty easy to come by—as you get older, though, fear becomes more complex and trickier to pin down. It's not that the characters in Shooting the Moon are terrified of some monsters with three heads and an appetite for brains; instead the book asks us to think about how we deal with fears that we can't confront or see. The Colonel fears what will happen to the men he sends overseas to the war; Jamie's mom frets over whether TJ will come home; Jamie worries about who she is without the army. Heavy stuff, we know.
Questions About Fear
- List all the fears you can think of from the book. Which do you think is scariest? What makes this particular fear darker or bigger than the others?
- Does Shooting the Moon come to a conclusion about fear? In other words, is it healthy to have fear? Dangerous? Something else entirely? Back your answer up with evidence from the text.
- In the beginning of the book, Jamie doesn't fear war. Why? What does this tell us about her character? Is it a good thing for her to act flippantly about war?
Chew on This
In Shooting the Moon, fear highlights the bad things that are inevitable in a time of war.
Jamie doesn't fear war because she doesn't fully understand it.