In Fear, Chevallier largely avoids traditional plotting — the perspective of heroes, plumed generals, and military careerists — for chaos: the sudden booms, unexpected leaves, and horrors of WWI trench warfare. This is the world of Dartemont, a French infantryman, and his fellows. So Fear is exhausting like that, held together not by any long plotted tension, but by military exercises, fatigues, and occasional trips to the latrine under fire. You don’t see many Germans and heroes are rarely living. Intellect is punished with increased mental anguish. This is boring deadly blasts like a shelling.

In Fear, Chevallier largely avoids traditional character development. Characters are men stripped of personality. Uniforms of caked mud and lice:

"'I've had enough! I am the centre of the world, as each of us is for himself the centre of the world. I am not responsible for others' mistakes, I have nothing to do with their ambitions and their appetites, and I have better things to do than pay for their glory and their profits with my blood.'
[…]
'Dartemont!'
'Sir?'
'Go and check where the 11th have positions their machine guns. On the double.'
'Very good, sir!'"

In Fear, truth is dulled by repetition. The homeland doesn’t want it; its fever is unchecked. Of a drama composed by a general in the habit of writing “little plays in verse, somewhere between tragedies and revues,” Dartemont notes, sarcastically, that the:

"general’s sublime alexandrines, in which ‘trench’ rhymes with ‘French’ and ‘savagery’ with ‘Germany’ are greatly relished by the civilians, who stamp their feet with restrained enthusiasm. It is a real shame to let such energy go to waste; they should be given weapons immediately and taken to Champagne…"

In Fear, there is no going home really:

"I try to win [Caca] round, recalling our adolescent years together, our friends, our happiness, our former ambitions. But I cannot interest him. He smiles weakly and says: ‘It’s all over!’
'And what about poetry, old pal?' I reply.
He shrugs his shoulders: ‘Poetry is like glory!,’ then leaves because someone is calling him. A moment later he returns with steaming bedpan, turns his head away in utter disgust, and sneers: ‘There you are, poetry!’"

In Fear, death is the only real authority. Anyone postulating otherwise is suspect, probably hasn’t spent much time in the trenches:

"Where we’ve been, you only salute the dead."

Fear, in a paragraph:

"Let me give you a balance sheet of this war: fifty great men to go down in the annals of history; millions of dead who won’t be mentioned any more; and one thousand millionaires who lay down the law. A soldier’s life is worth about fifty francs in the wallet of some fat industrialist in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Vienna or anywhere else. Are you getting the picture?"