A significant theme in the text The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty that has been communicated is the tragedy and futility of war. The theme highlighted teaches the message that war is pointless. By saying this, the author explains that going to war and fighting over an ideology is futile and will end in suffering, hurt and grief. The author expresses this message by highlighting the fact that innocent civilians will die, and people’s loved ones will be taken from them, which will result in no one winning the war because of the deep human impact. While reading this text, we learn many messages. One that stood out to me was the fact that no one will win in the war because of the gaping human impact that occurs. A scene which shows this is when we …show more content…
An example of this was “Then round the corner of the side street came an old woman. Her head covered in a tattered shawl.” “The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter.” The second quote uses a noun as a language feature because the author uses the word “woman” to make it known as to who was falling in the gutter and who had just been shot. Both these quotes work together to express the old lady being killed even though she wasn’t doing anything wrong, nor was she a threat to the sniper. This links to the unforgettable idea of the tragedy and futility of war because it explains that war is pointless. It explains this because the reader would imagine the old lady as completely harmless, yet she still got killed all because she was in sight of the sniper and because she was informing the man in the truck that someone was on the roof which happened to be the sniper. The author’s purpose in adding this into the story was to make us feel sympathetic to the old lady and for us to understand just how heartless and cold the Free Stater’s sniper is. Usually, individuals would see an old lady as a harmless, innocent grandma. They may also see their own grandma in her. By killing her, the author wanted to express how careless and un-sympathetic he is because he doesn’t think twice before shooting her down. Thus, this scene is unforgettable and makes us feel sympathetic to the old lady because she didn’t mean any