The Sniper Analysis

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. Having sensory details about the sniper from the single vision third person POV narrator in addition to knowing the protagonist 's thoughts while combating an enemy, allows O’Flaherty to characterize “The Sniper” into a hefty person. Some may argue, writing in first person point of view would have created a tough protagonist because they would see it through the eyes of the sniper who they automatically assume is resilient. However, only seeing through the protagonist’s eyes, would cause the reader to be unable to see the big picture.

Third person single vision is the only point of view that would work for Liam O’Flaherty’s short story, “The Sniper,” because the protagonist needs to be tough as he is fighting at war. Employing an outside narrator, or “a voice created by the author to tell the story,” to provide extremely descriptive details about the sniper’s appearance and subtle details about his surroundings is how