He wasn't the type to choose his words wisely before speaking. He would drop all kinds of racial slurs that he really needed. He would speak ill of his wife. Billings would say, "Rita was just a tramp, a common tramp." (Billing page 7). He also often called Dr. Harper bad. I think this whole thing about killing his children was haunting him. He really couldn't think straight. He talked about how during the Vietnam War he called soldiers hippies and still used racial slurs. Billings was just a negative person all around. However, there is a twist in the novel. After all, the novel is called “The