The Sniper Moral Injury

“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy stated to the United Nation General Assembly on September 25, 1961. War causes people to turn on people so we need to stop it, before no one is left. There are many similarities yet differences between “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty and “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy by conveying them through three topics, plot, irony, and theme.

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said to the United Nations General Assembly, on September 25th, 1961. This quote is saying that the killing of soldiers in war will soon destroy all. This relates to both stories because both soldiers regretted killing someone. In O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper” and Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” both works use plot, irony, and theme to portray the idea that war causes you to kill those you care or may have cared about.

Imagine the life of a person who cannot eat or sleep when their body needs them to. Imagine him not having the small luxuries people take for granted every day. Instead, this person lives every waking moment on the famous quote “Kill, or be killed.” The identity of this person is a soldier. Liam O’Flaherty, a World War 1 veteran, takes his experiences of war and incorporates them into his short story “The Sniper.” This piece of literature discusses the topic of war and the internal and external conflicts of the people consumed by war.

Liam O’Flaherty’s realistic fiction story, “The Sniper” takes place in Dublin, Ireland. The main character is a sniper fighting a civil war. He is on the Republican side who is fighting against the Free Staters. He does not put a lot of thought into his actions and it ends up costing him something big in the end. By using irony and description O’Flaherty shows that action without thought can lead to serious repercussions.

Irony also plays a big part in “The Sniper”, helping support the meaning of the story through the theme. At the end of the story in paragraphs 25-27, the sniper decides to look at the body of the man he had just killed, and to his surprise, he finds that the man he had just shot dead was his brother. Throughout “The Sniper” O’Flaherty is trying to convey the theme of “fighting for what you believe in does not always turn out the way you want it to be” This theme comes about within the story as the sniper constantly has the mindset to kill anything in sight, because he is trying to defend himself and fight for the Republic. The sniper

If you knew who you were shooting at, would you pull the trigger? In the story called ¨The Sniper¨ by Liam O'Flaherty, a man, who is referred to as ´the sniper´ is about a man who is in a war in Dublin. The first thing that happens is when he shoots a man in a turret and a woman. Then he gets shot in the arm. Then he shoots an enemy sniper. He goes and finds out that the enemy sniper he shot was his brother. I believe the theme of the story ¨The Sniper¨ by Liam O'Flaherty is that fear can lead to destructive decisions.

When a new officer “found two rats on his blankets tussling for the possession of a severed hand” (138), the company turned the event into a joke. Instead of worrying about how sickening the event is, they turn it into a joke; One who cannot make light of the horrific will start to break down psychologically. As a part of gaining a stoic approach towards life, Graves starts to become emotionally detached. “Those who are killed can’t complain” (115), he says in reference to splitting up the money of those who died. By looking at the war from a purely pragmatic point of view, Graves is able to ignore the terror of combat.

O'Flaherty is making a point about conflict; the specific point he is making about conflict is that war reveals how conflict leads to dividing people instead solving an issue or bringing people together. O'Flaherty states, "The sniper lay for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning his escape" (Line 65). The mentioning of fixing his wounds and making plans to escape show that through the entire war and the idea that this will solve a problem, everyone is resulting in killing and violence to get what he or she wants. The idea of the man vs. man conflict is creating a dividing line between sides through the violence instead of coming to a solution. O'Flaherty also mentions, "Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his

Death is something that occurs often in a war due to the violence and dangerous areas. Everyone takes on the thought of someone dying in different ways, whether they maintained a close relationship with the person or not guilt could become an instant reaction of the persons' death because of a feeling of maybe being responsible for the death that occurred. The thought of maybe being responsible for one of the soldiers that you have spent day night serving with could leave an enormous amount of guilt in one person. When witnessing a death or anything traumatic it is easy to blame someone else or even yourself for the tragic accident. Multiple characters in the book The Things They Carried demonstrated the guilt and responsibility of another

The portrayal of a soldier is the theme that I have been researching. The portrayal of a soldier is to show different characteristics and emotions of soldiers either during war or when they return from war. The four texts I looked at is, the film/movie directed by Ted Kotcheff, “Rambo”, “The Sniper” written by Liam O’Flaherty, “Forrest Gump” directed by Robert Zemeckis and the song, “Goodnight Saigon” written and performed by Billy Joel. These four texts all portray soldiers in either similar or different ways.

In the short story The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty, a main theme is that war is cruel. This is supported by many details within the story. War makes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do, mostly because it is their duty to protect what they believe in or their country. For example, the

One time when I was in 6th grade; playing with my soccer team in traverse city for the cherry cup festival. My team was in the championship game.We were all ready to win the game that day. I was so scared and pumped at the same time because I was ready to win but scared we might lose. In the middle of that game our goalie got hurt. The game paused and my coach looked at me and he said “ Keagan go get gloves and a goalie shirt on”. During that time when he was talking to me I was so scared; I had played goalie before but not during the most important game of the season. I didn’t want to let any of my teammates down, so therefore i proceeded to be the goalie for the rest of the game. In that story I showed bravery. I showed bravery by going in

Surprisingly, he seems undisturbed. Here, the poet uses, "now in my dial,"to point out the idea that the shooter is in fact a sniper, and this soldier seems to be recounting his actions. He may have been unshaken at the time of the shooting, but now he

The third person single vision point of view of a tough sniper fighting a civil war enemy, in Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper,” plays with the reader’s emotions throughout the story. He employs third person single vision point of view to tell the sniper’s intense adventure from an outside narrator who has access to the mind of the protagonist. O’Flaherty chose third person single vision POV because distancing the reader is the only way to develop a tough protagonist that the reader can be intimate with, taking into account his limited intellectual skills.

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.