Working with Genre & O'Brien

Most text or movies that fall into the category or genre of war time usually have some expectations from its audiences. As written in Chandler’s Working With Genres, "Genres are not simply features of texts, but are mediating frameworks between texts, makers and interpreters". Along with this view of the use of genre, he also writes, "They may even function as a means of preventing a text from dissolving into 'individualism and incomprehensibility' (Gledhill 1985: 63). And whilst writing within a genre involves making use of certain 'given' conventions, every work within a genre also involves the invention of some new elements." Doing so acknowledges what many authors or producers tries to accomplish when they make a new form of media. Each try to add something memorable into their work under these rules.
It is a story of one soldier who witness most of the war. There are many actions scenes and the main character will express his feelings of being surrounded by the dead bodies or one that catches his attention out of the many. Usually there is an epic scene of one person who dies because tragically because he was saving or trying to another. There is also a scene of the main character and his friends talking of their future or something heart-warming. There is usually a wife or girlfriend which he must leaves in order to be a hero to the country. The story eventually comes to an end when the war is over.
O’Brien story might not have used the stereotypical style that many other writers have. The elements that are usually used for one character is used for another person in the story. The element of a love one is not used for the main character, but for the story of the live of a dead soldier. In the movie Platoon and other war genre movies, the main character or one of his allies are tierd in to a tragic stories, their past or a tragic event in the future unlike O’Brien’s story. O’Brien also did not add in an action scene but just had illustrated the details vividly.
In O’Brien’s stories, he has what person may expect from the war time story genre. However, I believe that his writing has established an state of individualism while being able to write a book of the events that occurred in the war that he has witness. In the story Spinner, he wrote what his views of a war time genre and the elements he encountered in this genre. One element noticed was "The war wasn’t all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet." O’Brien also wrote "Not bloody stories necessarily .... A few peace stories." He applied these elements in his story The man I Killed. The main character of this story created a story of what may have been the sad past to the man he kill and even talking to this dead body. His story with him telling his daughter what he has done and why he lies in his writing. These stories incorporated more genres then what is usually found in a movie or a book of this genre. The element accustomed to this genre is also used differently.