Story Grid Analysis of Stories
First Blood by David Morrell -Book Analysis
Action Genre
I think it would be hard to argue that David Morrell’s book First Blood (Rambo’s first coming out) is not an action book. It definitely is. What might be surprising, to those that haven’t read the book, is how violent it is. In the movie, I believe there is only one death, the man that falls from the helicopter, and the rest are just injured or incapacitated. The novel is a blood bath. And in the end, though I doubted myself at first (because who wants to go against Rambo), Rambo is the bad guy, the antagonist. He’s the guy going around killing police officers, civilians, and National Guardsmen.
In some ways, this could be interpreted as a horror story. Much like the ‘monster’ of horror genre books, Rambo is unstoppable — you can’t negotiate with him, you can’t reason with him — he’s the very description of the Terminator, but he’s human. And despite what an asshole Sheriff Teasle is for setting Rambo off, in the end he is just trying to end the killing.
The Editor’s 6 Core Questions
This post analyzes David Morrell’s novel First Blood using the Editor’s 6 Core Questions from the book The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne which are:
- Genre
