The Sniper by Liam O’flaherty

The interpretation  of  the story “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty

The story deals with the problems of war, which breaks families apart and makes people unhappy.

Every story has the setting, complication, climax and denouement. The story takes place in Dublin in June, in twilight. The main character, the sniper is lying on the roof, observing the movement of his enemy on the opposite side of the street.

 The complication of the story starts with  the moment when he sees the armoured car, “the grey monster”, moving along the street. Immediately he takes notice of the woman in a tattered shawl who points to the roof where he is lying. Thus, the sniper guesses that she is an informer. He fires both, the tank driver and the woman. The moment he does it he is detected by his enemy on the opposite side  and  simultaneously wounded by him. His forearm is dead. The wound is serious, but the sniper tries to overcome the pain and treats the wound carefully and patiently. Then he thinks over the ruse. He deceives his enemy by pretending to be dead and, finally, kills him.  At the  end of the story he feels regret and remorse and curses himself, the war and everybody. The climax of the story and the denouement coincide because, ultimately, the sniper learns that he has killed his brother.

The whole story falls into six logical parts which can be entitled in the following way:

1. Description of the sniper
2. The fight
3. Being wounded
4. Treatment of the wound
5. Ruse
6. Shooting brother

As for the form of the story, it is written in the form of narration with elements of description. For instance, the narrator describes the sniper’s appearance and behavior, later the character of his wound.

It is the 3-d person narrative, and the author chose this form because, to my mind, he wanted to show the events objectively and precisely.

The story is based on external conflict between Republicans and Free Staters, when Ireland was on the edge of the Civil War. More of that , we can observe the internal conflict of the hero, who at the beginning of the story is full of patriotism and  aggression and, on the contrary, at the end of the story we see a broken person  who is full of remorse and regret, who revolts from the sight of his dead enemy. His feeling is, for sure, far more strengthened by the discovery that he had shot his own brother. Thus, we can conclude that the character of the sniper is round,  which is shown by the writer in its development as the story unfolds.