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How Does Liam O Flaherty Use Suspense In The Sniper

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“The Sniper” Revision There’s no difference between winning or losing in war. Many fighters and soldiers endeavor to fight hard in war and experience several physical injuries to the point where all they undertake or witness is bloodshed or death. Many soldiers can’t get the inexpressible images of war out of their mind which cause a lot to suffer profoundly from the war. These soldiers, especially, fight their hardest and arduously during wartime, but still the wounds and scars become reminiscences unable to forget. In the short story, “The Sniper”, author Liam O’ Flaherty includes the element of suspense to reveal that war causes not only physical risks, but also psychological suffering as well. The physical dangers of war …show more content…

For example, one way a psychological suffering is unveiled was that the republican was so manipulated into war that all he was used to witnessing was death. It builds suspense of psychological suffering because of how war affects the mind greatly to see things you mostly don’t see, such as death. Another way psychological suffering is revealed is that war reduces human beings to mere objects (no faces, no names, just targets to be shot at from a distance) like the sniper shooting the informer, the old lady, as just a target, nothing else. This shows suspense because of how war changes the sentiments or perspectives of others in wartime rather than in the real world. Another example of psychological suffering is that war has no boundaries nor any limits (age, location, family ties). The sniper, a young man, is fighting a war in the heart of a city, (Dublin, Ireland) and ignorantly shoots his own brother who was surprisingly the enemy to the republican. This creates immense suspense of how war affects those involved and causes them to do things they never thought they would do. Therefore, O’ Flaherty’s use of suspense reveals the psychological sufferings in war in various

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In Liam O’Flaherty’s The Sniper, the main character, a sniper, is in the middle of a civil war in Dublin, Ireland. It is his assigned duty to assassinate anyone on the the other side of the war, no matter who they are. This creates a huge conflict, considering that the sniper ends up killing his brother. This supports the central theme that war is cruel, and this can be supported by the craft elements of the dialogue used and the setting of the story.

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