Literary Analysis Of The Sniper

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Darkness surrounds the sniper as he lies quietly on a rooftop with his rifle in his hands. As he awaits his enemies below him, stalking them like prey. Liam O’Flaherty author of “The Sniper,” uses this young man to represent a battle raging in the man’s country. A battle is raging on in the Irish nation forcing soldiers to kill one another. Liam O’Flaherty gives a powerful opinion on the conflict taking place, using various literary techniques to catch the reader’s eyes. His overall structure contributes to development of themes in the theme in the paper. A single country torn apart by civil war causes the streets to run red with the blood of one another.
A Republican sniper awaits on a rooftop while an enemy’s armored vehicle pulls up. He awaits firing his rifle because the steel is impenetrable by his bullets, finally a man emerges and is killed immediately by the sniper’s bullet along with a woman standing nearby. Gunfire from another …show more content…

Stated in the story is that the sniper “has the cold gleam of a fanatic in his eyes” showing he is used to war. Also by stating “he is used to looking at death” this revealed that the sniper had seen many dead human beings, along with killing them. When the sniper eats his sandwich the author says he does so hungrily, meaning by instinct like an animal. Even when smoking he does so quickly due to the training he has gone through to be a sniper, his discipline. When the sniper kills the other sniper to finish the story his curiosity draws him to finding the identity of the person he has killed. Coming to the realization of the bitterness and evil the war has brought out in him. Finally the sniper looks into the eyes of the man and finds out the man is his brother, in fact saying that the sniper has killed another human being due to the evil within his

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