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Liam O Flaherty The Sniper Quotes

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“The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty is a historical fiction story following the events of the Irish Civil War. The main character is a sniper for the Republicans. In the story, he is forced to kill three people but afterward it says he is disgusted with himself. In this story Liam O’Flaherty supports the theme of violence will change people for the worse by using descriptive phrases and the character’s inner thoughts. The biggest problem in the story is how the sniper has to kill his enemies. This can easily be seen during times of action in the story and the aftermath. First, the sniper has to kill the gunner in an armored car and a civilian informer. The sniper enjoys the moment before he kills the enemy sniper and is even eager to do it. O’Flaherty wrote, “He took a steady aim. His hand trembled with eagerness. Pressing his lips together,he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired” (3). This quote proves that the sniper enjoys the war in the heat of the moment. This is shown by the sentence where the sniper’s hand trembles with eagerness. Normally, if someone is eager to do something, it means that they are excited about it and want to do something. This can be translated in the quote to mean that the sniper is excited about killing the enemy sniper. These thoughts alone would land any normal people in a mental asylum. The sniper even did this without showing a hint of regret. Then he has to kill an enemy sniper. However, as soon as these two events are over the sniper is …show more content…

Most people believe that this lesson does not portray to many people in today’s world, but it does. Everyday people get into arguments and sometimes fights which slowly changes people to be more aggressive and agitated. Will you heed the lesson O’Flaherty is teaching, or will you choose to let violence corrupt and change who you

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Liam O’ Flaherty does an outstanding job of creating a shocking and tense atmosphere within The Sniper. Throughout The Sniper, the author puts the Republican sniper in many close call situations that could potentially kill him. “A bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof... There was a flash and a bullet whizzed over his head,” (Page 1). When the sniper goes to peak after the first shot, the reader wonders if he is going to get hit with a bullet, which adds the atmosphere of .

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625 Words | 3 Pages

"Decisions made come with Regret" In the story, "The Sniper" by Liam O'Flaherty, the sniper is a dynamic character because his personality initially demonstrates that he is a tough soldier whose job is to kill the enemy; however, he undergoes changes that make him realize that he should not make foolish decisions that he'll regret. The Sniper is a republican soldier who fights in the Civil War, he is used to fighting and looking at death, and because of this, he puts on this "tough soldier" persona. His job as a soldier is to stay in the shadows and not take any risks of being seen by the enemy. Although, he risks this by taking a smoke, even though there are enemies watching: "placing a

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1482 Words | 6 Pages

This shows the sniper went through his brain and fast forwarded to the future to see what the outcome could have been and then made the choice. He could have been quick to fire, but he thought through it and of the consequences. Another example is “ the sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape” ( Flaherty 5) So meaning he was smart enough to be multi-tasking. He was smart enough to have the resources and the experience to treat his wound.

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327 Words | 2 Pages

In the story “The Sniper”, adversity was demonstrated when the republican sniper faced the problem of being in a war and having a high chance of death, but was

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1050 Words | 5 Pages

He, like many other soldiers, feared dying like so many had done before them. All soldiers had times of panic. The narrator said, “there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth... hoping not to die”(104). Soldiers do not always keep their cool. Nobody wants to die, and panic is a natural instinct when it comes to being shot at.

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573 Words | 3 Pages

“The lust of battle died in him” (O’flaherty, 214). Most of the time we feel remorse towards something we didn’t mean to do. Sometimes we do things without thinking what would happen next, that leads us to regret what we did in the past and feel compassion to ourselves or to the person whom we did something bad. The theme of “The Sniper” is family will always be family, no matter what they did to you, and the theme of “Cranes” is family and friends are more important than loyalty to a nation. We are humans, and we all make mistakes.

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He had become so good at shooting things at extreme distances. The Army had no choice but to give him an extremely specialized position of being a sniper. The character was living his two major passions, one he loved to shoot a rifle, and second he was playing baseball. He just couldn’t get over the fact that he was having fun, and getting paid for it. I designed him to almost have a dual personality happy go lucky then, when he receives the orders; he knew what the job was.

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438 Words | 2 Pages

¨The Sniper¨ by Liam O'Flaherty is about a dark night in Dublin that was quiet, although they were in the middle of war, the sniper decided to light a cigarette causing a spark that was noticed by the enemies. He gets shot at and acts dead to trick the enemy, which works! He sits up and shoots his enemy, later seeing it was his brother. Through the plot of the story, readers believe it is about sacrificing things for your beliefs.

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The third text, The Sniper, written by Liam O’Flaherty, shows a sniper killing targeted people. Near the end of the book, he realized that he killed his own brother as well. The Book Thief, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, and “The Sniper” are such stories that have been able to teach me that humans make plenty of mistakes but those mistakes, however, cannot be erased.

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1124 Words | 5 Pages

In O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper” and Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” both works use plot, irony, and theme to portray the idea that war causes you to kill those you care or may have cared about. There are many similarities and differences In the plot of both “The Sniper” and “The Man He Killed”, there are many similarities and differences.

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624 Words | 3 Pages

Liam O’Flaherty’s realistic fiction story, “The Sniper” takes place in Dublin, Ireland. The main character is a sniper fighting a civil war. He is on the Republican side who is fighting against the Free Staters. He does not put a lot of thought into his actions and it ends up costing him something big in the end. By using irony and description O’Flaherty shows that action without thought can lead to serious repercussions.

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506 Words | 3 Pages

After turning over the corpse though, he finds out it’s his brother. In, “The Sniper”, by Liam O’Flaherty, the sniper learns that violence and assumption can cause us to act in a regrettable way. The theme of assumption and violence is first introduced when the enemy sniper shoots and kills innocent people. The sniper takes place on a rooftop near O'Connell Bridge, and, as we now, in the middle of the Irish Civil War.

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518 Words | 3 Pages

If you knew who you were shooting at, would you pull the trigger? In the story called ¨The Sniper¨ by Liam O'Flaherty, a man, who is referred to as ´the sniper´ is about a man who is in a war in Dublin. The first thing that happens is when he shoots a man in a turret and a woman. Then he gets shot in the arm. Then he shoots an enemy sniper.

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211 Words | 1 Pages

In the short story The Sniper, Liam O’Flaherty recounts a story of an Irish sniper fighting for the republican army during the Irish Civil War. He wrote this short story based on his experience with time at war. Liam o’flaherty illustrates how war can reduce the value of family and human lives, betrayal, and suspense. In this essay I will be discussing these major themes as well as comparing this story to books such as The Odyssey and others containing similar themes. This essay also will discuss how suspense is used in Liam O’Flaherty’s The Sniper.

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1116 Words | 5 Pages

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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