Rhetorical Analysis Of The Sniper By Liam O Flaherty

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Liam O’Flaherty was an Irish author that wrote short stories that had a mix of brutal naturalism, psychological analysis, poetry, and biting satire (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica). He wrote many short stories that got readers to think in a different way to solve what is going on in the story. One of his many short stories, The Sniper, is one of his most popular and most abstract pieces of his work. Knowing this, The Sniper is a perfect candidate for a rhetorical analysis paper. The story starts off with a sniper on top of a building scouting for other snipers that are trying to kill him. The sniper feels tired so he eats a sandwich and drinks some alcohol. He puts away the alcohol and feels that he should risk being seen so he can light a cigarette, but he made the wrong choice for an enemy sniper spots him and takes a shot that hits the rooftop the sniper is on. He relocated and looked for where he was being shot from. Then an …show more content…

War is destruction at its finest. If a country wants to make peace then why would they kill thousands of the other country’s inhabitants for peace? That is the complete opposite of what peace means. Peace means freedom of disturbance, quiet and tranquility. It does not mean explosions, gunshots, and death everywhere. People that have witnessed war like the sniper develop a mental illness called post-traumatic stress disorder, (PTSD). PTSD causes those who have seen a tragic event to have nightmares, anxiety and uncontrollable thoughts of that event (get.smarter.com citation). In a war every soldier witnesses something that is tragic, it could be an explosion destroying a church or it could be a young child getting shot with a sniper rifle. The destruction of war can cause people to go insane. What is the point in having a war if that country lost so much more than what it was trying to gain? War is not a peaceful solution to a country’s