Liam O 'Flaherty's The Sniper'

What is Literature The question of what is literature and why we study it is a very difficult question to answer. This because there is no simple, or arguably completely correct, answer to what literature is. I believe literature is anything written down with the intent for it to be read by others for enjoyment or knowledge. The study of literature is important to us so we can try to get an idea of what life is like the perspective of the person writing the literature we study. The definition of literature, according to dictionary.com, is, “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.” That
Literature helps people experience things they would otherwise never be able to experience. Liam O 'Flaherty’s “The Sniper” is a great example of this. When O’Flaherty is explaining the scene where the sniper is on the room lighting a cigarette and a bullet whizzes past his head is a great scene that helps explain what it would be like to be in that position (O’Flaherty page 474). Most people have never been in a war, even fewer in a sniper fire fight, and therefore most people will never know what it is like for those few that have been in that position. But by reading this story, people can almost visualize what it must have been like. The adrenaline pumping through their veins and the terror as a bullet almost hits you seems like an almost impossible thing to understand if you weren’t actually there, but O’Flaherty uses literature to help explain what it was like. Literature can also help explain what it was like to live in a totally different environment. In “Warring Memories” by Kandi Tayebi, she does just that by show us what her husbands like was like in the Middle East. She explains how he would watch CNN and comment on how men should take their rings off or their bodies will be looted and mutilated once they are dead (Tayebi page 510). This again is a life completely different then life in America and by reading about it, it helps spread awareness of what other people’s lives are like. History is another reason to study literature. Many pieces of literature do a great job of explaining history without boring the reader with nothing but facts like a history textbook. “Like a Winding Sheet” by Anne Petry does a very good job of doing just that. It isn’t nearly as boring as reading a civil rights textbook but does a great job of showing how hard life could be for an African- American in the 1960’s. She showed how you could have to work extremely long hours of manual labor without breaks just to