What Measure Is A Mook / Literature

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• All Quiet on the Western Front is all about this trope. In one scene, Paul attacks a French soldier, whom he previously sees as nothing more than a Mook, but after realizing that the soldier has friends, a job, and a family, Paul is profoundly disturbed.
• Visser Three from Animorphs certainly seems to feel this way, as he executes his fellow Yeerks so often he's probably killed more than the entire Andalite military. Largely subverted in the rest of the series, however — as the series goes on the Animorphs become more and more aware that the Yeerks they're killing are as real people as they are, and that they have a good reason for wanting to play Puppeteer Parasites to humanity. And that doesn't even count their hosts, who have no control over the situation at all.
  • It's also played straight. Even after the Animorphs start to think of the Hork Bajir and Taxxons as people they are still far less likely to look for nonlethal resolutions than they are when dealing with Human Controllers, although it's somewhat understandable, since a human is much easier to incapacitate non-lethally than a huge blade-covered lizard or an (also huge) ravenous centipede.
    • Which is itself brought up as a plot point when Visser One figures out that the Animorphs are human because of this. It's probably safe to say that this trope was deconstructed.
• Strongly defied in the Babylon 5 novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows, where Sinclair, the newly appointed head of the Rangers addresses his new subordinated with a speech wherein he stresses that the goal of Rangers is protection of life, all life, even that of their enemies, the Shadows, so those who'd joined the Rangers looking for revenge against them, might better leave right then, for they would not find what they are looking for.
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer 'Gatekeeper' novel trilogy. The Big Bad has dozens of human mooks on his side. Many of them are smart enough to figure out they're getting a raw deal from a guy who wants to turn Earth into a charnel pit. The authors delve into the minds of many mooks, making some sympathetic. Then the mooks tend to explode.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: The books make it clear that minor enemy guards and soldiers are still people who have their own lives, not just meaningless evil minions. As an example Adela, Tasia's younger sister, is distraught that Tasia and her rebel followers had to kill her guards while rescuing her from the palace, saying they were good men, one having a daughter her age. Tasia knows this and tries to avoid it, but they believed she's a murderer and traitor who was intent on harming her sister, so there was ultimately no other way.
• R.A. Salvatore's Demon Wars Saga largely follows this trope with regards to goblins, giants, and powries (evil dwarves), with one interesting exception: in Transcendance, the heroine Brynn and her elvish escort come across a band of goblins deep in the wilderness, away from any human settlement. The Elf almost casually slaughters the goblin group, but Brynn objects, claiming that the goblins have done no wrong and do not deserve to be murdered. The Elf's response is rather disturbing (he holds Goblins collectively responsible for atrocities committed by their race in the past), and the whole thing ends up never getting mentioned again in the series.
• In the Dragonlance novel War of the Twins, in the wake of the Army of Fistandantilus seizing Pax Tharkas, Raistlin finds a pile of dead gully dwarfs among the casualties. Initially, he worries that this is a sign that someone is altering history, as there were no mentions of gully dwarves dying at Pax Tharkas in the history books. It then occurs to him that more likely, the historians didn't bother to record these deaths because nobody cared about a handful of gully dwarves being slaughtered in the middle of a famous battle.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Inverted in especially near the end of Small Favor. Harry is more than willing to do absolutely everything in his power to kill Nicodemus, even slowly throttle him to death over several minutes, but he steadfastly refuses to kill the mooks that chase him down afterward. It's later discussed in Skin Game, where part of the reason for the plot is a chance to try to redeem the mooks, and save the souls of any that would listen. They may be brainwashed by propaganda, but should at least have a chance to switch sides...
  • Inverted with Mr. Etri of the Svartalf. He and his kind are strong believers in Sacred Hospitality. In the short story "Bombshells" when at a party the svartalf are hosting to sign a peace treaty with a rogue and dangerous nation, said nation plans on unleashing a bomb to kill many present, save the svartalf, a few magical beings, and themselves. Then when all other nations declare war on them, the svartalf would be bound by the treaty to be their ally. This rightly pisses off Mr. Etri when the deceit is laid out and he aides the heroes in killing the nation's representative. The human-turned mooks of the nation, however, as their minds have been twisted into loyally following the now-dead creature and this nation, are seen like tools by the svartalf. They will be returned to another person of that nation because one doesn't punish the hammer for what the owner does.
• Ziggy of Each Little Universe is extremely upset when she realises she's accidentally killed a mook in a stealth game. Overlaps with What Measure Is a Non-Human?: as a non-human herself, she's distressed by the thought that any life — whether human, non-human, or fictional — might not matter.
• The trope is discussed in one of Michael Moorcock's grim stories of The Elric Saga. After a humble sailor and a central character have been killed, Elric carves a memorial to the latter, and the story then comments on how there are no memorials made for the former (I think this was in "The Jade Man's Eyes").
• In Book III of The Faerie Queene, Britomart mortally wounds a random challenger she comes across on her journey, at which point the narrative shifts to detail the man's entire backstory and the mourning process his mother goes through.
• In the Philip Marlowe novel Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe has a moment of sympathy for a Mook he's just beaten up to escape: "I was sorry for him. A simple hardworking little guy trying to hold his job down and get his weekly pay check. Maybe with a wife and kids. Too bad. And all he had to help him was a sap. It didn't seem fair." Before leaving, he takes the time to make sure the unconscious mook is as comfortable as a bound and gagged man can be, and that he's not going to choke on the gag.
• In Aaron Allston's Galatea in 2-D, the hero tortures one of the villain's mooks to try to get information from another. He slackens off without getting everything he wanted, realizing that she didn't know anything and that he was invoking this trope. That thought horrifies him — just because they were two paintings who came to life, and whom the villain had sent to kill him didn't mean torturing them was all right. At the climax, the trope is reversed: they kill the villains and tell the mooks that as long as they stay out of their way, the heroes won't bother them.
• Jenna in the Great Alta Saga is prone to these moments, but she usually feels guilty (read: can barely keep going) afterword. It makes sense given that she has been raised in a culture that has no real taboo against violence, but she remains a seventeen-year-old girl.
• The Hammer (2022): Due to growing up in the slums with little to eat, Tiny doesn't take kindly to gangs who prey on the poor and hungry. He takes special pleasure in beating up these thieves and gangsters, calling them naught more than "human trash" and that his conscience is clear because he's not actually killing "people" when a priest tries to talk him out of it.
• In His Dark Materials, this is a function of the daemons: if the daemon is a rare animal, it would be a crime to kill the owner. If the daemon is a guard dog or a wolf, go ahead it's a war, any kill in the other camp is good!
  • However, Will explicitly rejects this idea. Throughout the series, he ends up killing three people: two mooks and an Angel, and only one of those on purpose. He is deeply disturbed each time, and ends the series deciding to reject his role as a warrior, opting in the post-script to become a doctor instead.
• The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm by Daryl Gregory shows the collateral damage among citizens who happen to be living in a country ruled by a supervillian when it's 'invaded' for the umpteenth time by American superheroes...What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?
• In Eldest Eragon does some angsting after killing rabbits to eat them and resolves not to eat meat anymore because it involves killing living things. (Let's not start on the Fridge Logic of a young man raised as a medieval peasant being squeamish about dead animals.) This does not prevent him from later in the book massacring enemy Mooks in a borderline Ax-Crazy manner, even after the opening to Eragon establishes that most of these mooks just got picked up by the draft, and some may even be from his hometown.
  • It gets far worse in Brisingr. When Eragon is undercover in the Empire with Arya, they get into a fight with a group of soldiers, they kill them all with no weapons. One almost escapes, and as Eragon catches up with him, starts begging for his life, repeating (truthfully) that he was dragged against his will into the war, that his parents will miss him, that he has yet to get married and live a life, and so on. Eragon rationalizes him as a threat, and breaks his neck with his bare hands. What the Hell, Hero? To be fair, you can argue about whether any of the other options available to Eragon (memory-wiping, invisibility, knocking the man out and leaving too quickly for an alarm he raises to make a difference, or trying to recruit him to La Résistance and sending him elsewhere) are really viable here. But the real point is that Paolini doesn't. No indication is given that avowed vegetarians Eragon and Arya think twice before slaughtering effectively defenseless punchclock villains, even when they're surrendering.
  • That scene lampshades this trope. Arya and Eragon discussed beforehand how many servants are charmed to serve and follow the empire, and releasing them would just force them to tell the truth back to the empire.
  • After killing the patrol, Arya explains to Eragon that earlier in her time with the Varden she had come to grips with the wartime necessity of murdering people essentially by examining her actions and her motives. In the end, she decided that while she hated killing people, the alternative, letting the tyrant king gain power and rule unchecked, was worse. So if she had to kill people to fight Galbatorix, she would. In the meantime, whenever the depression got intense, she'd think of the beautiful gardens in the homeland she was fighting to protect.
  • The trope is later played with when they attack a major city. Eragon knows that many of the troops are not charmed and compelled to follow The Empire, so he offers them a chance to surrender beforehand, as many fear fighting a Dragon rider. Many of them do, and he asks his allies to treat them well, as they willing fully surrendered. The ones that don't proceed to fight and are killed by Eragon.
  • Subverted with Eragon's cousin Roran who, by contrast, is uncomfortably aware of the humanity of the soldiers he kills and often has to remind himself where his priorities are. Eventually, Roran goes into the kill or be killed mindset of the war.
  • Played With again when the battle commences at the end of Brisingr. The enemy Mooks are poisoned, and killed without mercy. Eragon goes into a frenzy of slicing through enemies in the war. When all the action is over and the enemy retreats, a weakened and physically drained Eragon wanders around the battlefield, healing Soldiers of minor to fatal wounds, and not caring about their alliance.
• Surprisingly (given the nature of the series they spawned) often averted in the James Bond novels. Bond almost never kills without considering the consequence, even in Dr. No he actually has to tell himself that the two nameless security guards he is about kill were almost certainly murderers themselves. Also, the start of Goldfinger shows Bond in depression after (in a mission he hadn't been all sure about to begin with) killing a Mexican "capungo" in self-defense; Goldfinger, by contrast, explicitly counts himself as a great director surrounded by transient "extras" whose fates are unimportant. Interestingly, Bond's reluctance to kill despite his license to do so plays a direct role in his needing medical attention at the end of many of the original novels.
• Averted quite bluntly in Monstrous Regiment. Polly and the rest of her squad are sneaking into an enemy fortification, and hear some guards coming up, and her inner monologue goes:
  Yes, a good swipe at head height would kill...
  ...some mother's son, some sister's brother, some lad who'd followed the drum for a shilling and his first new suit. If only she'd been trained, if only she'd had a few weeks stabbing straw men until she could believe that all men were made of straw...
  • It's also the original basis of the City Watch characters: Guards! Guards! is dedicated to the mooks:
  Whatever their name is, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No-one ever asks them if they wanted to.
  • In Anthony Horowitz' Trigger Mortis, when faced with the choice of whether or not to kill one of the villain's henchmen who is pleading for his life, Bond reflects on how, on previous missions, he'd killed mooks without considering the fact that they may not have been inherently 'evil', but simply people desperately trying to make a living the only way they could, but then reasons that it didn't make the crimes they helped commit any less horrific which justified their deaths. In the end, he chooses to spare that particular kid's life, and considers it indicative of the difference between him and the villain.
• Many of William Jonstone's western novels, particularly the earlier The Last Mountain Man and Blood Bond books, have the heroes pass by chances to kill a Big Bad (such as during non-lethal sniper warfare, or an infiltration of or attack on his property) until the climax (albeit occasionally with a pragmatic reason) while killing various hired gunmen every chapter or two. Many of those henchmen get individual names, go through slapstick moments during earlier fights, have Seinfeldian Conversations with each other, show healthy respect/fear for their opponents, display Villainous Valor, mention having met one of the heroes before, get Even Evil Has Standards moments, talk about their loved ones while dying, have a Personal Effects Reveal that they had relatives, or all of the above. That said, those same mooks may get Kick the Dog moments to even this out, and the heroes are usually happy to let them switch sides or Screw This, I'm Outta Here instead of killing them, and usually will kill the Big Bad in the end.
• Inverted to the extreme in Ken Follett's Lie Down with Lions, where Jane refuses to kill the Russian soldiers who are at that very moment trying to capture her and Ellis and bring them back for execution, and who are at war with the very Afghans who's she's been trying to help for the past few years, because the soldiers "all have mothers." She has considerably less consideration than that for the actual Big Bad.
• The Lord of the Rings: The difference between attitudes towards orcs and humans arises several times during the books. In the aftermath of each great battle the surviving humans who fought on Sauron or Saruman's side are given the opportunity to surrender and be taken captive, treated with respect and eventually sent back home unharmed, and their dead are given decent burial, while the orcs are killed to the last man and burned in pyres. If they're ever given the option of surrender, we don't hear of it. Of course, the Orcs have never been portrayed as anything other than a race of slobbering psychopaths who were either designed or corrupted by the God of Evil of the setting to never have so much as a hint of positive emotions. It's unlikely that any sort of peaceful surrender with them is possible.
  • Despite generally portraying the bad guys as acceptable targets, there is a moment in The Two Towers (just before he first sees an "Oliphaunt") when Sam witnesses an enemy soldier from the south being killed in battle by Faramir's men. Sam never shows any remorse for the death of an orc. (In the film Sam's thoughts about the dead man are given to Faramir as a speech.)
    It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead man's face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.
    • Orcs are said to be naturally evil in the finished version of The Lord of the Rings. But Tolkien, a devout Catholic, was troubled by the Unfortunate Implications of anyone being utterly incapable of redemption, and much of his later writings grapple with this idea in more depth.
• In The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson:
  • Vin attacks an enemy keep, killing dozens of soldiers at least. However, when she reaches the lord and his son — the only two named characters in the building — she refuses to harm them and leaves instead. Though this is actually a subversion — it wasn't the sight of the lord and his son, but the realization that the lord was crippled, the son was harmless, and though the lord had made himself look very dangerous, he wasn't a serious threat that did it — because this makes Vin realize that she just killed a building of people for no reason. She promptly goes off, sick to her stomach, and hides until her friends find her.
    • Outside of this moment, Vin generally tries to avoid unnecessary casualties among Mooks (contrary to Kelsier who's mentioned below), though she pulls no punches when she has to fight. At the end of the first book for instance, instead of killing some palace guards blocking her way during the big uprising of Luthadel against the Lord Ruler, she gives them the choice to desert and join the rebels or fight her and die. They choose to desert.
  • Invoked by Kelsier from the same series. He considers working for the nobility, even if you're just a Punch-Clock Villain, to be a death sentence and justifies his actions by saying that anyone who decides to serve the Final Empire must be ready to face the consequences of helping such a violent and oppressive system (i.e. die for their crime). However, Kelsier is generally presented as bordering on being a Well-Intentioned Extremist (albeit not outright villainous). Marsh, his brother, calls him out on his attitude.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy kills countless monsters, (granted, it's not exactly killing because the monsters can reform) and he doesn't appear to mind killing enemy human mercenaries. but when a demigod apart of Kronos' army is fighting he will do whatever he can not to kill the demigod.
• Taken up to eleven in Michael Crichton's final novel Pirate Latitudes. The "heroes" slaughter hundreds of people, among them a nineteen-year-old kid. It's not even acknowledged that the mooks these people slaughter are actually on the side of the law and it's the protagonists who are menacing the populace. The Big Bad of the novel is essentially evil incarnate, because he'd have to be, in order to be worse than the heroes. This novel was published posthumously, and it wasn't actually complete.
• Redshirts explores this, as the mooks are the main characters.
• Shadow Children: The sixth book has a group of Population Police officers killed, and their survivor shanghai Matthias into an escape. Instead of kidnapping him, the officer, Teddy, thinks he's saving the boy, and even explains why the Population Police were a good idea in the first place. Teddy goes onto to take him to HQ, and introduces him to the other agents, who're all quite friendly and easy going. Matthias is torn, as the police agents who've hunted him for his entire life, are just like regular people doing what they think is right. Teddy later dies handling Poison ID cards, and a memorial is set up for him.
• Star Wars, at least with regards to certain types of mooks. In one novel, during a scene from the perspective of an Imperial officer, he muses that since the Emperor's death, stormtroopers are even less willing to retreat, becoming almost fatalistic in their outlook. Said perspective also includes musing that stormtroopers aren't really people — even the Empire believes that, apparently. Meanwhile, it's averted with the more run of the mill mooks. In the Wraith Squadron novels, they try hard to avoid casualties, since they're fighting more for hearts and minds than control, as the New Republic has already conquered Coruscant. One sequence a gunner jump from his ground-based gunnery tower a second before a Wraith fighter hits it, and he muses that at least he won't have to worry about the outcome of the battle in another fifteen hundred meters. One thousand. Five hundred...
  • It's actually discussed in the last Wraith Squadron book, when a new recruit who up to that point had been careful to always set her blaster on stun, finds herself assigned for the first time to a mission where she'll have no choice but to kill her enemies... whom she's afraid may be unwitting pawns of the conspiracy rather than willing participants.
  "Well, now you're at that point. A point your father doubtless hit when he was younger than you, just joining the Rebel Alliance. The point where you ask yourself, 'can I kill someone I'm not sure is guilty?'"
  "You've been waiting for this, haven't you?"
  "[...] you've grown up knowing that a warrior like your dad sometimes has to face an honorable enemy. An enemy whose only fault is that he's working at cross-purposes with you, and if you don't fight him until he falls, very bad things will result."
• The Star Wars Legends novel Death Star features the personal lives of many mooks. For example, one of the guys seen at the fire control station of the laser is there, as is the Stormtrooper who leads the chase against Han. Due to an influx of guilt and a bit of Force sensitivity, many mooks form an escape plan just to get out of the damned place.
  • This even leads to Redemption Equals Death: When the Death Star gunner, suffering from textbook Being Evil Sucks, gets the order to fire on Yavin IV and wipe out the Rebel leadership, he stalls, praying for the rebels to come kill him. They did.
    "Stand by... Stand by..."
  • It's even Discussed somewhat. During the Battle of Yavin, an architect notices that the Rebels keep going after the exhaust port and realizes what they're doing. When she remarks that there are still some (relatively) innocent people aboard the Death Star, another character points out that there were a lot more innocent people on Alderaan, not to mention all the other planets the Empire might go after next.
• In Book II of The Thebaid, the soldiers of Thebes work for the fraudulent king Eteocles and are sinister enough to ambush Tydeus in the night, yet their deaths are written as horrific tragedies. This applies to no one more than the two twins, who Tydeus skewers while the elder is desperately trying to mend the younger's wounds.
• Averted, sometimes, in The Tomorrow Series. Ellie often reflects that many of the enemy soldiers she shoots, blows up, or runs over with big vehicles are young people not that different from her and her friends... but by the end of the series, the protagonists are so hardened that they ambush and kill enemy patrols just for something to do.
• Played with in Where Eagles Dare, wherein Smith and Schaffer routinely go out of their way to non-fatally disable Nazi Mooks whenever possible. Smith even risks his life to save a guy from a fire. It's made clear that both he and Schaffer can and will kill without remorse, however they still see their enemies, Those Wacky Nazis though they may be, as human beings, and would prefer to avoid killing them. In addition, the Nazi officers serving as the main villains are treated the same: the heroes spare them if they can, kill them if they need to.
• Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death. The heroine refuses to kill the villain when she has him at her mercy, despite the fact that he has been leading a genocide for some time now and plans to continue to do so (she claims to oppose killing when faced with this choice). Compare to when she shows no remorse when she kills and/or blinds large numbers of random nameless people.

• In Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series, this is the core ethical dilemma Kaladin faces when he realizes the Listeners, a humanoid race he has been fighting are for the most part just people protecting themselves

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