GENRE is a classification of texts based on the cathartic (emotional) response the author wants the audience to feel. There are three genres focused on offering its audience escapism (comedy, fantasy, and science fiction); three offering sentimental connection (tragedy, romance, and slice of life); three offering action-oriented thrills (war, western, and the quest for adventure); and three offering cerebral thrills of suspense (horror, mystery, and crime). These genres are defined by their use of TROPES, which are consistently used literary devices like characters, plot events, settings, and motifs—these tropes become so integrated into their genre that they can often become cliché. Every genre can also blend with other genres (meaning the text has both sets of tropes) and has derivative SUBGENRES with additional specific tropes. These twelve genres encompass both fictional and nonfictional texts as well as every kind of text structure.
WAR is a genre of artistic expression that revolves around feelings of obligation: the pride of doing what's right, the anger at those that would cause society harm, and the fear of letting down the people back home. Story-wise, War stories feature an armed force fighting against another armed force to protect the people they love at home and win glory for themselves. These requirements mean War stories are often historically based in nature and centered on men, as most wars in history have been fought by male-only armies. All of this makes War is a very complex genre with a more limited appeal than other genres. Despite this, some of the oldest stories in the Western canon are War stories. Along with the Western and the Quest for Adventure, War is one of the three genres of action. While all stories have plot action and characters doing something, an ACTION story is one meant to raise an audience's adrenaline through fast-paced writing and high-stakes risks. Stories of action tend to have either simple plots with complex characters or complex characters and simple plots. To increase the adrenaline of the conflict, these stories always have a ticking clock and a put a heavy burden on the protagonist, whose failure will result in many lives ending or being ruined.
War is defined by eight tropes. It centers around THE SOLDIER who, willingly or unwillingly, has to leave home to a FOREIGN DESERT defend those he left behind (stories focusing on a war coming to a place and how it affects the lives of everyday people are not war stories but TRAGEDIES). The soldier soon finds companionship in a diverse BAND OF BROTHERS, who he learns to trust completely, and a military bureaucracy of generals and commanders that are incompetent and dangerous. Soon, the soldier and his band will fight a FACELESS HORDE for VALOR on the battlefield, but it's never as simple as "point rifle and shoot." The chaos of battle is so overwhelming and THE FOG OF WAR so confusing that the soldier starts questioning what they all are doing there. The soldier starts to doubt his command and his equipment, as he's had his life narrowly taken by THE VOLATILE GRENADE handed to them. Still, the soldier endures, and whether they win or lose the battle, they cannot deny that WAR IS HELL.
The Soldier serves as the lens through which the audience sees the war. Soldiers are interesting characters because they are, first and foremost, citizens. Many war stories depict the life of the soldier before the war growing up in their homeland to show the emotional connections to his home--family, identity, national pride, legacy--that drive them to defend their homeland in the war. This is true even in cases where the home team is the aggressor because the reasons for war don't matter too much: the heart of the story is the soldier's personal experience on the ground. Though some soldiers aren't really driven to go to war. In fact, there are plenty of War stories featuring characters reluctant to go for moral or selfish reasons. However, they still make the decision to accept the call to arms and march off to war (mostly because, if they didn't and deserted instead, it wouldn't be a War story). Soldiers are also interesting characters because they must deal with the tension between being a warrior and being part of a unit. A true warrior (think a viking or knight) relies mostly on their own skills, intuition, and judgment on the battlefield. Yes, they are part of an armed force, but they have a high degree of autonomy. A unit, however, must follow orders without question and act like a gear in a great machine according to a plan they didn't devise and may not even understand. This causes an existential crisis for the soldier, as they worry about losing themselves to the war. Often, the soldier as character goes through three stages. At first, they have a romanticized and naive view of what war can be. Even the unwilling soldier drafted against their better judgement thinks, Maybe this won't be so bad after all as they go through initial training and befriend some of their brothers in arms. However, the new recruit will then endure a BAPTISM BY FIRE with their first experience in heavy combat, which will shatter all of their romantic notions of war and start them down their journey of moral crisis. As each battle is fought and the soldier sees more and more brutality and death, they shift into the HARDENED MAN who becomes quieter, more aloof, more reactionary, and more like just a member of a unit than a warrior. They may or may not snap out of this emotional detachment by the end of the story.
In almost every war story, the soldier undergoes a transformation.
While the soldier learns to trust his band of brothers--even those he doesn't like or agree with--the same cannot be said of his equipment. Unlike the Hero in a Quest for Adventure or the Stranger in a Western, the Soldier in a War story doesn't have a magic sword or trusty pistol to defend themselves with. All their tools of was from weapons to uniforms are mass produced, standard issue, and interchangeable. This makes every battle a craps shoot so far as if the soldier will get a broken or jammed piece of equipment that, in a life or death situation, will fail and leave them dead. This principal extends out to larger and more complex weapons of war like tanks, fighter jets, and battleships. A soldier needs to carry their volatile grenade, but they can never trust that it will actually explode.
The weapons of war are also metonyms of how THE BRASS in charge of the war see the soldiers: standard issue and interchangeable. While company commanders that spend an extended amount of time with the enlisted men have empathy for the soldiers, the generals and officers above them just see warm bodies they can move into formations. This lack of care is not lost on the soldiers, and they begin to resent and distrust the men at the top who order them on suicide missions and give them volatile grenades to fight with.
Like the Hero in an Adventure and a Stranger in a Western, the Soldier finds themselves in a new land. However, heroes pass through a number of towns with a variety of townsfolk, and the town the stranger finds has many different citizens. The soldier, however, finds themselves in a foreign desert with only their fellow soldiers. By "desert," this doesn't necessarily mean a place with little water and lots of sand but a place that has been deserted: the people that once lived their (if any ever did) have fled or are in hiding. Soldiers find themselves walking through ghost towns with blasted rubble lining the streets and the few citizenry still left hostile to them (even if they come as liberators). The emptiness of these social places can even make the soldier's homeland feel like an alien world, as some stories have the soldier march through place they know that have been scarred by battle and deserted.
Fortunately, soldiers aren't alone in their battles. War is a team sport, and so the soldier is added to a unit that becomes a band of brothers that have one another backs in a firefight. To emphasize the communal power of the band of brothers, they typically have a variety of backgrounds and personalities. Indeed, some do not get along and even dislike each other... in the barracks. However, the soldier learns to trust every man in their unit with their lives. And when one (or more) perishes, the soldier feels immense loss and pain. These different types of soldiers (which could include the Soldier protagonist) can include:
- The Father: Typically the unit leader, this soldier is an older man (probably an actual father or grandfather) who has battle experience and acts as the moral center of the squad. He's well respected by all the men, calm in demeanor, and will go toe-to-toe with incompetant leadership.
- The Kid: The opposite of the Father, this is a younger soldier who is energetic, naive, and not very battle ready. They make mistakes, get under the skin of the more experienced soldiers, and usually don't survive for long
- The Joker: This soldier uses humor as a shield both for themselves and others--they diffuse tense disagreements and treat war like a game. However, this is all a facade: underneath, this character is deeply cynical and hates the war.
- The Expert: This soldier has a very specialized skill that makes them invaluable to the squad, whether that be proficiency with weapons, tracking, repair, escape, or piloting a vehicle. This soldier's know-how will save the squad at least once in the story, and the squad will feel frustrated when the brass see them as just another replaceable soldier.
- The Doc: Whether an actual unit medic or just a soldier that knows a lot about medicine and first aid, the Doc is a soldier that is slightly less cynical than his peers because he gets to save more lives than he takes. This gives him more moral clarity and a better sense of purpose.
- The Preacher: Again, this could be the actual Chaplin assigned to a unit or just a very religious soldier, but this man is fighting for God and country and sees the war as a moral crusade. However, the brutality of war means this character will most likely have a moment questioning their faith.
- The Loose Cannon: This is the soldier that has been pushed too far and has snapped under pressure. They are violent, antisocial, and kill without remorse. This character often dies by doing something crazy on the battlefield or engineers his own death after a moment of clarity where he realizes that his brotherhood no longer trusts him.
- The Ox: The strongest man in the squad, this soldier is a gentle giant who often dies to show that strength and health are no guarantees of survival in a war.
- The Poet: This soldier is an intellectual who often was forced to go into battle and vocalizes the philosophical tensions that the squad is feeling. While the Poet attempts to bring beauty to the barren wastelands of war, the story has no room for beauty, and this character is often killed.
- The Quiet Man: This soldier says little, is seen even less, and only really engages with the rest of the squad in the heat of battle. Eventually, the soldiers learn that this man isolates himself for fear that other soldiers will not accept him because of where they come from, what they believe, their race, or their sexuality (occasionally, this character is even a woman in disguise).
And who does this band of brothers fight against? An enemy, of course, but not an enemy made of people. Their foe is a faceless horde that is the embodiment of an evil force that hates them and wants them dead. At least, that's what the soldier is taught early on in training so they can have an "us vs. them" mentality when going into battle. Thinking you're stopping an ultimate evil, after all, makes pulling a trigger easier. Except the other side isn't a faceless horde of monsters: they're people in the same situation facing the same odd stacked against them. They argue with their incompetent superiors. They freeze at night on their standard issue bunks. They don't want to die and, if they had a choice, most likely wouldn't kill either. When the protagonist soldier realizes this, it marks a turning point in their character arc. Once they start to humanize the enemy, every battle becomes harder to fight, and their hopes shift from wanting to win the war to wanting the war to end. This doesn't happen in every war novel--stories of some wars, like the American Revolution and World War II, see the soldier reconcile their actions with the idea that what they are doing is the right thing and that goodness must prevail. However, every war novel has this moment of reckoning.
Another moment of reckoning comes during the baptism by fire where the protagonist first learns what war is really like as they are engulfed in the fog of war. Is this a literal fog? Actually, yes: smoke from a constantly firing battery and dust kicked up by fighting combatants literally creates an atmospheric fog over the battlefield. Yet the fog of war is more a psychological complication than a physical one. In a battle, everything happens quickly, and everything that happens is important--one wrong move, and the soldier is dead. It's too much for the brain to handle, and the soldier goes into a fight, flight, or freeze reaction before getting their bearings. The soldier will be unsure of what exactly happened in the battle after the fact, and they will miss important moments that would be critical in any other novel (like the death of a friend) because there is so much going on at once. The fog of war can even offer the soldier the PLOT ARMOR OF ADRENALINE. Unless the shot is lethal, the soldier will power through their injuries on the battlefield so they can save a teammate or accomplish the mission. Occasionally, they know their wounds will be fatal, so they go out a hero by making a sacrifice that end the battle more quickly. Soldiers don't always have this plot armor, however, and every good War novel explores INJURY as a motif that reflects the cost of war.
So what keeps the men fighting against injury and ever-present death? Is it personal honor? Is it a desire for glory? Or is it just survival? It's actually all three, which can be summed up in the word VALOR. Valor is the strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to face danger without hesitation. Valor is needed to stand up for what is moral and right. Valor is needed to survive, as those that hesitate or run get shot. Valor is also the one thing that the brass notice about the regular soldier--that's why they give medals for it. Now, valor doesn't have to mean the same thing for every soldier, but the soldiers that survive (including the protagonist) all find their moments of valor. Often, it happens on the battlefield when saving a friend. Sometimes, it comes in the barracks where a soldier defies the brass and refuses to commit an unlawful or immoral order. Occasionally, valor comes in sacrificing oneself for the squad. In a place as unforgiving as war, valor is the only reward.
Whether the story extols the virtue of soldier fighting for a just cause or demonizes all war, every War story agrees on one point: WAR IS HELL. Obviously, this is a theme of anti-war novels like Johnny Got His Gun and All Quiet on the Western Front. These stories depict war at its most grisly and visceral, and they often liken the soldiers going into battle to meat going into a grinder. Ultimately (the anti-war stories say), this is what people in war are: meat. This is because when soldiers return home, it's either in a box or as a shell of their former self. Even in the stories that promote the virtues of war, war is not depicted as a fun time (though these novels tend to shy away from the blood and flesh of reality). Even career soldiers who got into the business of war show moments where they must deal with the brutality, pain, and horror of war. However, pro-war narrative exist to show that a valiant soldier fighting for a noble cause can make it through hell and back for the good of others, and that their service and sacrifice should be commended. Actually, it not very accurate to call these pro-war narratives--they are pro -soldier narratives, as by their own admission, war is a terrible thing.
- SPORTS NARRATIVE: We don't have as many wars in modern culture as we used to, but we still march at teams to fight for glory or suffer injurous defeat at the hands of an enemy. We just call it sports. The sports narrative is like war without death: the players become soldiers, their commander is the coach, the league or the stadium owners become the brass that doesn't understand, and the band of brothers on the team is pretty much unchanged--though sports stories also have the character of the HOT SHOT, a member of the team who is too cool and thinks their too talented to be a team player. Just as War is Hell, sports narratives have the main player question if the brutality of training and the pressure of needing to win is worth it.
- POW STORIES: Unlike regular War stories, where the soldier is fighting to get inside enemy territory, the POW story is about a group of soldier that have been captured mastering a plan to escape enemy territory. Here, the fog of war switches to the anxiety of the prison break, and the story feels a lot more like something out of the Crime genre than War. However, as soon as the escape happens, the characters are back on the battlefield, and the tropes of a War story take back over.
- RESISTANCE STORIES: These are war stories, but the threat has already taken over the homeland and has made it resemble a foreign desert. Here, a group of ragtag rebels meet in secret so they can spy, plot, and pull off an operation to free their occupied home from the foreign invaders. This story also incorporates some of the tropes of the Crime genre.
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