Liam O Flaherty's The Sniper

War is too destructive of a force for people or the societies of the world to handle. It makes people have to do things that would otherwise be considered inhuman, just so that they can survive. In the story “The Sniper,” a man is forced to kill an old woman because, she was telling his enemy where he was hiding. He had to murder his fellow countrymen because they had different beliefs than he did. They wanted to change their country so that it gave them more rights, so their country decided to settle these beliefs with war. Over the centuries many stories have been written revolving around this subject, one of the greater known artists of these stories is Liam O’ Flaherty. According to britannica.com, one of the leading figures

Once the sniper arrived to another position for protection; he fished out his field dressing and ripped it open with his knife. He then dripped the fluid from an iodine bottle into the wound and placed cotton wadding over the wound. After tying a bandage over the wound he had to make a conscious effort to overcome the pain. The sniper needed to make an escape plan, so he sat in his location, nursing his wound and thinking. The sniper then came up with his escape plan, which was to make the enemy sniper think he was dead. He put his cap on the end of his rifle and placed it over the parapet on the roof. A bullet soon went through the cap and the sniper let his hand hang over the side, and he let the rifle fall to the street. He fell and brought his hand with him as he crawled away to get a good look at if the enemy thought he was dead or not. He saw silhouette of the enemy, so the sniper brought out his revolver and shot the enemy. The corpse of the man who the sniper had shot fell to the streets, and the sniper cursed himself and the war and threw his gun to the ground, which is when if fired and almost killed him. The sniper then left the roof to go report to his commander but got curious and went to see if he knew the man that he had shot. When he turned the body over he realized the man he shot was his brother. O’ Flaherty ended the story this way to help get the meaning of this story across to the audience more