Liam O 'Flaherty's The Sniper'

The story ends ironically when the IRA sniper realizes that the enemy he killed was his own brother. But there are larger ironies here: first, that all of the sniper’s Free State enemies are, in a sense, his brothers, for they had been comrades in arms fighting for the same cause; second, that all men are brothers as descendants of Adam and Eve. When they fight, they become Cain and Abel. No doubt, the IRA sniper now wonders about the identities of the turret gunner, the old woman, and the person manning the machine gun.

War. Death. Pain. Anger and remorse. None are pleasantries, but all are faced and handled every day. In Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper," all of these things are brought to an acute reality. To aid in his creation of such emotional conflict, O'Flaherty portrayed the sniper as a very controversial character. We can see this contrast in personality by looking at appearance, actions, and thoughts. "...the face of a student, thin and ascetic,...eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic." And so the sniper is described in a physical sense. Upon looking at the meaning of the words, we find an unexpected conflict of definition. O'Flaherty writes that the sniper's face is "that of a student." We think young, and vibrant. However,
When he is considering means of escape, he comes up with a plan to trick the enemy sniper into believing he himself was dead. "His ruse had succeeded." Ruse is a word that means "an action in order to mislead." This portrays the mischievous side of the sniper. One more facet to his complex personality. So, as one can see, Liam O'Flaherty's sniper was a very deep and complicated character. Through his actions, appearance, and thoughts, we see the signs of age and wisdom versus the daredevil, both apart form the mischievous student brought out in his success plan. All in all, the sniper's personality was written to be very conflicting and