Liam O 'Flaherty's The Sniper'

1349 Words6 Pages
Rough Draft Guns blazing, hearts racing, fighting everywhere. A sniper sits atop a roof waiting for his next victim. Many decisions and emotions go into every second of the Irish Civil War. Liam O'Flaherty tells a story like such in "The Sniper", a dramatic short story in which a man is fighting in the Irish Civil War. O’Flaherty is an Irish-born author who wrote many novels and short stories throughout his eighty-eight year life, focusing mainly on the hardships of war. A strong majority of his works consist of the struggles of war since he served in the Irish Guards of the British Army during World War I and joined the Irish Republican Army in 1921 to push for Irish Independence (PowerPoint). O’Flaherty demonstrates the hard life of a soldier in war by using a dramatic setting, emphasis on characters and their relationships, different writing techniques, and the struggle that the sniper goes through throughout the entire story. It was a dark, gloomy in Dublin,…show more content…
After taking out the gunman and old woman, the sniper engaged in a long battle with the opposing sniper on the enemy rooftop. The sniper had to use his quick wits after being shot in the forearm. He placed his helmet atop his gun and after the opposing sniper shot it he made it appear as if he had been killed. Since his forearm was wounded he had to take a difficult shot with his revolver to kill the enemy sniper. The shot somehow managed to miraculously kill the enemy sniper, and gave the sniper a feeling of success. The snipers feeling of triumph was not long-lived however. After all of the fighting had ended the sniper started to feelings of remorse, and a strange curiosity as to if he happened to know the enemy he had just slain. Since the fighting was at a minimal level, the sniper decided to make a quick dash over to the murdered foe. As the sniper looked into his rivals face he saw that he had just killed his own
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