“The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty is a historical fiction story following the events of the Irish Civil War. The main character is a sniper for the Republicans. In the story, he is forced to kill three people but afterward it says he is disgusted with himself. In this story Liam O’Flaherty supports the theme of violence will change people for the worse by using descriptive phrases and the character’s inner thoughts. The biggest problem in the story is how the sniper has to kill his enemies. This can easily be seen during times of action in the story and the aftermath. First, the sniper has to kill the gunner in an armored car and a civilian informer. The sniper enjoys the moment before he kills the enemy sniper and is even eager to do it. O’Flaherty wrote, “He took a steady aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together,he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired” (3). This quote proves that the sniper enjoys the war in the heat of the moment. This is shown by the sentence where the sniper’s hand trembles with eagerness. Normally, if someone is eager to do something, it means that they are excited about it and want to do something. This can be translated in the quote to mean that the sniper is excited about killing the enemy sniper. These thoughts alone would land any normal people in a mental asylum. The sniper even did this without showing a hint of regret. Then he has to kill an enemy sniper. However, as soon as these two events are over the sniper is …show more content…
Most people believe that this lesson does not portray to many people in today’s world, but it does. Everyday people get into arguments and sometimes fights which slowly changes people to be more aggressive and agitated. Will you heed the lesson O’Flaherty is teaching, or will you choose to let violence corrupt and change who you
This shows the sniper went through his brain and fast forwarded to the future to see what the outcome could have been and then made the choice. He could have been quick to fire, but he thought through it and of the consequences. Another example is “ the sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape” ( Flaherty 5) So meaning he was smart enough to be multi-tasking. He was smart enough to have the resources and the experience to treat his wound.
He realized that he needed to end the fight once and for all so he did not get hurt again. The Sniper, determined to win the fight became creative. “Taking off his cap, he placed it over the muzzle of his rifle. Then he pushed the rifle slowly upward over the parapet, until the cap was visible from the opposite side of the street” (O’Flaherty 3). When reading more into the story, the Sniper’s plan was to make it look like it was him sitting up instead of the rifle.
He, like many other soldiers, feared dying like so many had done before them. All soldiers had times of panic. The narrator said, “there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth... hoping not to die”(104). Soldiers do not always keep their cool. Nobody wants to die, and panic is a natural instinct when it comes to being shot at.
He had become so good at shooting things at extreme distances. The Army had no choice but to give him an extremely specialized position of being a sniper. The character was living his two major passions, one he loved to shoot a rifle, and second he was playing baseball. He just couldn’t get over the fact that he was having fun, and getting paid for it. I designed him to almost have a dual personality happy go lucky then, when he receives the orders; he knew what the job was.
“The lust of battle died in him” (O’flaherty, 214). Most of the time we feel remorse towards something we didn’t mean to do. Sometimes we do things without thinking what would happen next, that leads us to regret what we did in the past and feel compassion to ourselves or to the person whom we did something bad. The theme of “The Sniper” is family will always be family, no matter what they did to you, and the theme of “Cranes” is family and friends are more important than loyalty to a nation. We are humans, and we all make mistakes.
In the short story The Sniper, Liam O’Flaherty recounts a story of an Irish sniper fighting for the republican army during the Irish Civil War. He wrote this short story based on his experience with time at war. Liam o’flaherty illustrates how war can reduce the value of family and human lives, betrayal, and suspense. In this essay I will be discussing these major themes as well as comparing this story to books such as The Odyssey and others containing similar themes. This essay also will discuss how suspense is used in Liam O’Flaherty’s The Sniper.
At the beginning of the story, the sniper was so excited, he couldn't eat. It was night in Dublin while he was just waiting. The author states,¨His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.¨(page 58) This statement infers that the man has killed many people and has no remorse.
After shooting the enemy, “The sniper looked at his enemy falling. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse” (227) this quote is important because it explains how this is difficult for the sniper and how he is already hurt by what he did. This connects to the theme statement because it shows how the sniper sacrificed his happiness to win the war.
Though the Sniper had to make sure that his image of being a "strong" and "heartless" soldier doesn't slip, by killing these people, he isn't considered weak or cowardly. Nonetheless, this backfired on the sniper because all of the chaos led to the enemy taking a shot at the sniper's arm, Lastly, the Sniper has had enough of this war and must kill the enemy. To do this, he uses violence, which he learns isn't the best idea. The Sniper tricks the enemy into thinking he's dead, it would be quite convincing since the enemy already shot the sniper. After this, the sniper takes steady aim and shoots the gun: "The Sniper looked at his enemy and he shuddered.
After defeating his enemy, the sniper had realized how frustrating the war had truly been for him. He finally feels a sense of completion and that now a load of stress had been lifted off his
In Liam O’Flaherty’s The Sniper, the main character, a sniper, is in the middle of a civil war in Dublin, Ireland. It is his assigned duty to assassinate anyone on the the other side of the war, no matter who they are. This creates a huge conflict, considering that the sniper ends up killing his brother. This supports the central theme that war is cruel, and this can be supported by the craft elements of the dialogue used and the setting of the story.
The third text, The Sniper, written by Liam O’Flaherty, shows a sniper killing targeted people. Near the end of the book, he realized that he killed his own brother as well. The Book Thief, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, and “The Sniper” are such stories that have been able to teach me that humans make plenty of mistakes but those mistakes, however, cannot be erased.
A similarity in “The Sniper” is when the sniper realized he had took a risky shot
This shows how the sniper’s actions without thought affect him for the worse. O’Flaherty establishes the theme of “The Sniper” by using description and irony. After the sniper turns over the dead body, he realizes what he has done. He was not thinking when he shot the enemy.
His heart probably sank when he found out the man he shot and killed was his brother. The theme of the story ¨The Sniper¨ by Liam O'Flaherty shows us that fear can lead to destructive decisions. In the beginning, the sniper kills the man in the turret and kills the woman. Later on in the story, he shot the ´enemy´ sniper with the revolver.