Situational Irony In The Sniper

Most siblings fight all the time, but you would never really expect them to be enemies against each other in war. Liam O’Flaherty chooses to write about those types of siblings. In the story The Sniper, a man has a moment of truth when he finds out the enemy he had killed was his own brother. Liam uses situational irony in his story to show that war makes human beings seem like mere objects.

Sitting on a rooftop was a sniper who was calmly excited, waiting for his enemy to make a move. He risks lighting a cigarette and that blows his cover when a bullet hits the small wall that’s protecting him. When a woman shows herself telling the enemy where the sniper lay, those were the last words she would ever speak. “The woman darted toward the side

street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter.” (O’Flaherty) This shows that war shows no gender. When the sniper shot the women, he was not thinking about whether she was forced to be an informer, because who wants to go into an open area where you’re a sitting duck? She might have had a husband and kids who loved her. War does not know the meaning of feelings and life.
After the sniper had taken down the people that were in his way, it was just between him and his brother, or as the sniper only knew him as his enemy.

It was now survival of the smartest. The sniper had been shot and in that time he was overcoming his pain and coming up with a fast plan to trick his so called enemy. As the sniper had lifted his rifle it didn’t take long for his brother to take the bait and shoot. With his brother thinking he was dead the sniper made quick actions to shoot, and he got his wish; The enemy was dead. “ 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.”(O’Flaherty) War starts, just to end something. People will do anything to fight for what they believe in and I think that’s what Liam wanted to get across because when he ended that line in that moment.

Liam uses situational Irony to show that humans are no more than objects in a war. The irony starts when the readers find out that the sniper had just shot his own brother. Most siblings fight all the time. I guess these siblings had more problems than the average family. Not only did his brother just die, he now has to live with the fact that he killed

him.