O'Brien genre

When thinking of war movies, I think of ones such as Saving Private Ryan. The opening scene on the beach filled with nothing but none stop action. That’s what you expect from a war movie or story. “Genre provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select and interpret texts” (Chandler). As an audience, this helps us understand and put things into a better perspective while reading or watching. We all want to know the ending before we even see the movie. The more we know the better it is for us. “Genre makes possible the communication of content” (Fowler 1989: 215).

Growing up I was forced to watch war movies with my grandfather. Not only did we watch countless hours of war movies, it also came with an hour or two lecture of the history of that movie and that time period. Not all of them were bad, but most were. I felt they all were the same. There were men fighting and dying for no reason. That’s what my view was and still is. In my opinion war movies are boring. In O’Brien’s Spin, he even talks about boredom in the war. “Then you’d hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you’d be squealing pig squeals”. That kind of boredom” (O’Brien). The movie Jarhead also expresses the boredom which the soldier goes through. It’s not often you will read or watch something about war and talk about the boredom. O’Brien breaks the genre of war for a moment and breaks the expectations of an action packed war movie and slows it down. O’Brien lets you feel exactly what the solider feels. O’Brien writes in such great detail when talking about the man he killed. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hold, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear…” (O’Brien). There is no action, just great detail. The Good Form also uses great detail in describing how he felt at the time of the killing. War movies and stories all have the side stories, some with love, friendship, and so on, but the way O’Brien writes the graphic reoccurrence of his killing makes the reader really feel what he felt. His three stories aren’t what you would expect in war.