Liam O Flaherty The Sniper Summary

1. The story that i read was "The Sniper" by Liam O'Flaherty

2.The story took place in Ireland during the civil war. The author says that Dublin, the main character was completely surrounded in darkness in a sense that he was hiding, then talks about how he was too excited to eat it explains the anxious mood of the character. In the setting he hears guns , which also contributes to the excitement and uneasy feeling in the story.

3.The theme of the Sniper is the tragedy of war and how it can tare apart country and families, as well as destroy humanity in the sense that they become heartless, war makes the nation ruthless and insensitive as a whole and people generally. The general attitude and actions of the character and how he has very little

emotion or guilt also shows this. The final lines of the story effects the meaning of the theme as well when the author says “The sniper darted across the street. A machine gun tore up the ground around him with a hail of bullets, but he escaped. He threw himself face downward beside the corpse. The machine gun stopped.Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face.” It shows how during the civil war the brothers were fighting against each other, and when he turns the corpse over and sees it is his brother he does not express feeling any kind of emotion, sadness, or regret
4.The author creates a surprise ending by disregarding to foreshadow in any obvious ways to what will happen in the end all the way through the story
5.I was surprised, because i was not aware in civil wars families often go against each other.
6.This story was great because, to me it was original and I have never read anything like that or even in the same setting. This story did not bring any fear to me, but made me think more on how tragic war is, especially when it is against your own family.
PART 2 instead of shooting his brother, when he went to go check everything out he could have been shot by his brother and not actually killed until he realized it was his brother that killed him and he should have had a few last words before he died like "just because were family it changes nothing on this battle field" and the one that shot him could have said "family or not you are an enemy and my job is to rid this battle field of scum like you goodbye old friend"