Heaven or Hell is a short story based on a true historical event. The story highlights the inward, the invisible and the intangible power struggles of mankind. The stark descriptions of the reality and horror of war are frightening and shocking to the reader, aimed to affect emotionally and cause them to consider. The story is structured to make the reader visualize pain and death in war – Hell, when everything appears lost and hopeless, and Heaven - heroic and victorious, when the obstacles are overcome and the “Draconic Empire” defeated.
The story has a formal register to deliver suspense and the factual horrors of war. This has been achieved in a number of different ways, firstly, the complex sentence, “Sergeant Hugh Mott and his colleagues frantically worked away in the belly of the bridge whilst troops continued to traverse the spine.” This creates formality through its sophisticated structure coupled with a serious and impersonal tone. Standard English also creates formality with the active verb phrase, “With a resounding thud his body hit the cliff”. There is no slang or dialect which helps to develop the formal and complex tone intended. The use of lexis, with the polysyllabic words, also creates a formal tone. The verbs, “surging”, “paralysing”, “illuminated”, and the pre-modifying adjective, “terrifying” are all a formal use of lexis. The story also avoids abbreviations such as the pronoun and verb, “He had”, instead of “He’d” which is more informal.
Heaven or Hell is targeted at a teenage male audience who become gripped by the powerful descriptions and breath-taking scenes of war. To appeal to this audience I have used semantics in the subordinate clause, “The thorns ripping into his flesh like splinters of glass.” This simile distinguishes that the audience is for young, teenage males because they love the suspense and fear that death and failure is so