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Theme Of War In Liam O 'Faherty's The Sniper'

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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.
In the short story The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty, a main theme is that war is cruel. This is supported by many details within the story. War makes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do, mostly because it is their duty to protect what they believe in or their country. For example, the …show more content…

Without craft moves made by the author, the story wouldn’t even be a legitimate story, just some thoughts put together. Two out of the many very important craft moves in The Sniper are the setting/time period and the point of view. The setting and time period is very crucial to The Sniper. The book takes place in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, during the Irish Civil War. In the beginning of the story, the author paints a very clear picture of the setting, allowing you to vividly imagine the conditions that they are in during the short story. “The long June twilight faded into night. Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone through the fleecy clouds, casting a pale light as of approaching dawn over the streets and the dark waters of Liffey. Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms. Republicans and Free Starters were waging civil war.” (O’Flaherty, 1) If the setting wasn’t described so thoroughly, the reader would not be able to imagine what was going on or comprehend anything. Also, it is made very clear that this story takes place in the middle of a war, hence the fact that the gunshots can be heard. It is even stated at the end of the paragraph that a civil war is being waged. If there weren’t a war-like setting involved, the story would definitely not even be close to the same. A writer can’t have a setting-less story and make it work. To add on, if the story wasn’t in the same time period, either, it would also be very different. It wouldn’t even be the same setting, considering that the current time period that it is in is the only one with the Irish Civil war; it’s physically impossible to have the same war in two time periods, so this would also indirectly affect the time period, too. The point of view is

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