Theme Of War In Liam O 'Flaherty's The Sniper'

The story that had the most suspense was “The Sniper” because the author used short, choppy sentences, left cliffhangers at the end of paragraphs, and had a plot twist at the end of the story.

In conclusion the story ‘The Sniper” written by Liam O Flaherty and “Cranes” WRITTEN BY Hwand Suwon and translated by Peter H. Lee. These two stories show the true effects of war. The negative are shown but some postive effects are shown as well. In “The Sniper” the lesson learned was “War know no boundaries age, sex ,location, time of day, or family ties. In cranes the theme was “Don’t turn your back on your friends” and “War treats humans like objects.”So these two stories show the negative effects and positive effects of war, And also why war isn’t for

One similarity in O’Flaherty’s piece is the sniper’s thoughts about how war is painful and can rip people apart. “His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody...and looked into his brother’s face” (O’Flaherty, 208). This quote talks about how the sniper felt after seeing his enemy fall off the roof from being shot and then once he identifies the body as his brother,he realizes how war can truly tear families apart. Another similarity based on theme in the poem “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy. The soldier realizes near the end of the poem that war is full of suffering and can tear friends apart. “You’d treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown” (Hardy 5). This quote is saying that if you were to meet an enemy anywhere else besides on the battlefield you would have a pretty high chance of becoming friends. Even though there are similarities, there are also many differences in both stories. For example, in “The Sniper” the war turned brother against brother. “His hand trembles with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired” (208). This quote is showing the nerves and anxiety the sniper had received from out tricking his own brother. The last example in “The Man He Killed” the war had

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.

“War is like love, it always finds a way” (Bertolt Brecht). Although one is pure and the other evil, the forces of both love and war influence the best stories. A more interesting topic emerges when a character must choose between loyalty to a loved one and devotion to government. In “The Sniper” and “Cranes” the main character is involved in a civil war that calls for allegiance to the government despite his feelings for a loved one who fights for the opposite cause. “The Sniper” and “Cranes” are two similar pieces of literature, however both stories are different and unique from one another. Although these stories share similarities in the plot, the characters, and the theme they also show many differences.

The author begins the story with a short one sentence paragraph. “How do you generalize?” He uses this rhetorical question to bring a point across about how when telling a war story there is no real place to start and to end. In the second paragraph the author uses abstract words to show just how contradictory the war is, for example he states “War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” In the third paragraph author Tim O’Brien says “awful majesty” to explain combat during the war. He uses an oxymoron to emphasise the grotesque beauty

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.

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.

In the text it says, “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.” and early on in the story he wonders if he knew the other sniper, and ironically it was someone he knew very well (4). He is caught up in annihilating the enemy, he only stops to think about who the other sniper is. O’Flaherty uses irony to show how the sniper ends up killing his own brother and only after he shoots him he wonders if he knew him. In addition to the irony, O’Flaherty also uses description to develop this idea of action without thought. He gives us a vivid description of the sniper that makes us wonder about him, “His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of a fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death” (1). These two sentences give us information of the sniper based solely on the words of the author. The way O’Flaherty describes him makes us think about what he does and who he actually is outside of being a sniper. 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.

Never has a book so accurately described the horrors of war on humanity, and depicted them in such a faceted and rich way. Not only does he evoke the carnage and butchery generated by war in a unique and innovative fashion, but he also daringly personifies the absolute torment imposed upon the soldier psyche. Epitomizing this; at the end of the novel, every single major character has been slain in some barbaric way or another, allowing the author to once again highlight the endless disaster of war. He shows how soldiers were fundamentally and inherently altered by war, physically tortured and mentally

The soldier himself is frightened on why he could not save him which haunts him in his dreams as he says “In all my dreams/ before my helpless sight” is how every time he dreams he sees the soldier and he cannot control it causing him to think of it every night frightening him everyday. Soon he will feel that the dead person wants revenge for his death as the soldier states “he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”, The dead soldier always comes into the narrator's dream wanting revenge as he chokes him as how he was being choked by the gas clouds and then drowning as how the dead soldier drowned in the green sea of chlorine gas. The horrors of war is what scares the soldier even after the war. At first soldiers imagine themselves as heroes creating them eager and excited they are until they finally get to the front and see no man's land. No man's land is usually bumpy with shell holes and dead trees that are either broken or burnt. They see the Ground stained with blood and the carcasses left behind, Some are even burnt that nothing is left but their skeleton and some cloth that is stained on their rib cage and their cranium. Nothing left as the soldiers look onto no man's land but the horrific sight of what battle their was there and what battle their will be for their

Death is always associated with the occurrences of wars. No matter what, there is no escaping the fact that people will die in battle. Throughout the book The Things They Carried there are scenes of extreme violence, and heart crushing deaths. Witnessing someone you know being killed, or even killing someone you do not know is very traumatizing to a person and their life, but it's war and that is just how it is. Tim O’Brien uses many examples from the war for his story to emphasise the theme of Death, and violence and that no matter what it is no one's fault, and everyone fault.

The theme for this chapter is that war changes people for the worst because when Mary Anne, (Fossie 's girlfriend) comes to the medic camp, she is an good down-home American girl of her time but, as time advances, she becomes more intent to join the fight and become a soldier. She starts to sneak off during the night and never coming back to be with Mark Fossie. Eventually, she leaves him to live in the woods. Soon after she is seen, and she has transformed from how she was at the beginning, as a normal American to what she is today. This shows us how war can change people not for the better but for the

“The Sniper” is a short story by Liam O'Flaherty, the message is that there are no winners in war. The story is about a young soldier fighting in the war and is determined to do whatever it takes to win the war. At the end he thinks he wins because he shoots the enemy. The enemy turns to be his brother questioning if he really won this war. Throughout the story the author shows that even though you win there is always a downside to winning. The author shows this by using literary devices in this short story such as situational irony, foreshadowing, and dramatic irony.

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.