Examples Of Figurative Language In The Sniper

Imagine the life of a person who cannot eat or sleep when their body needs them to. Imagine him not having the small luxuries people take for granted every day. Instead, this person lives every waking moment on the famous quote “Kill, or be killed.” The identity of this person is a soldier. Liam O’Flaherty, a World War 1 veteran, takes his experiences of war and incorporates them into his short story “The Sniper.” This piece of literature discusses the topic of war and the internal and external conflicts of the people consumed by war. Liam O'Flaherty's short story is based around the Irish Civil War. The Irish Civil War was brought upon by a conflict within Irish nationalists, over whether or not to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty (Dorney, 2012). The two contending sides were the Republicans and

His technique makes the reader feel as if he is right there with the sniper, feeling the tension and the nerve racking trials the sniper goes through. O’Flaherty uses personification and puts the reader in the sniper’s shoes when he writes, “the sniper could hear the dull panting of the motor.” When the reader can feel the emotions of the characters in the story, it helps contribute to the development of the story’s meaning. The reader is taken along the journey of the sniper; throughout the story the reader learns the skillfulness of the trained killer, and his experiences of war. In the conclusion, a plot twist occurs, revealing the person he had killed was his brother. The author uses irony in this plot twist to show the cruelty of war. In “The Sniper”, the cruelty of war is displayed, by not only the killing of the sniper’s own kind, but the difficulties he has to face, just to survive. An example of this, is the sniper having to kill a seemingly innocent woman, just so he can survive for the day. This story provides for a greater meaning of war, than just what is