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The Sniper Compare And Contrast

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According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the veteran suicide rate was running at 22 suicides a day in 2012. This number of suicides exceeded the number of soldiers actually killed in battle. Many are surprised by this statistic, and many have looked further into the reasons of why this is. The main characters in both “The Sniper” and “The Firing Squad” reveal some of these potential feelings about war from a soldier’s perspective. Captain Adam from “The Firing Squad” and the sniper from “The Sniper” have similar views on war. Both harm other people to benefit themselves in one way or another, and demonstrate physical and emotional reactions to a situation that could have an adverse affect on both them and their family. Both characters …show more content…

Interesting how an experienced sniper would take this risk. When he lights the cigarette, he immediately faces conflict when another sniper on a building across from him shoots at him. After some an intense buildup, our sniper kills the other soldier when the opportunity strikes. He tricks the other sniper, and saves his own life by shooting him. It is only then that the sniper reveals a softer side. Realizing what he has done and after watching his dead opponent fall to the ground from the roof of the building, he is “bitten by remorse”; “The lust of battle died in him”. It is clear that the sniper is weaker than initially described, and the reader becomes sympathetic even though he has just killed another man. Some textual evidence of the sniper’s opinion of war is stated, “His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.” The sniper has reached a breaking point, chosen by the author to communicate to the reader that even the most toughened human can fall apart in seconds. Taking another life is very hard on some soldiers, and many resort to drinking or other ways to attempt to take these instances off their minds, “Taking the whiskey flask from his pocket, he emptied it a drought. He felt

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599 Words | 3 Pages

More than 5,000 families in the United States, have sedulous relative fighting for our country’s freedom. Many of those families have not the slightest idea of what war is like, and all of its physical and mental effects. The author uses descriptive words to take the reader on a mental voyage. The soldier keeps a conversationalist tone and uses rhetorical strategies such as imagery and rhetorical questions to show how miserable he is living. The e-mail begins with the solider mentally describing your living area; he describes it like a million dust particles that are glued to you.

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189 Words | 1 Pages

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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590 Words | 3 Pages

The Sniper realized that he needed to do something about the person who shot him, if not then the enemy could have come over to finish the job. The Sniper knew that to keep himself safe or feel safe/ win the war, he fired his gun, even though his arm was gone and hurting. This points out that everything takes a little amount of

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668 Words | 3 Pages

“ She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer”. This evidence shows that the sniper was clever enough to realize that the old lady was an informant. Once he found out he had to make a plan to take her and the armored car that was nearby. This shows that the IRA sniper is clever because he is able to make quick plans and

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467 Words | 2 Pages

When the enemy shot he thought he had killed the Sniper; therefore, he was not paying attention when

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1679 Words | 7 Pages

Killing, however, did not come easy to the war hero. He suffered drastically from the obscenities he witnessed during the war, and eventually agonized the consequences of PTSD. While on duty, Kyle witnessed experiences that evidently aided to his condition as “the face of his machine gun partner was torn apart by shrapnel”, he watched a “comrade die when an enemy bullet entered his mouth and exited his head”, and scrutinized a “third friend die when an enemy grenade bounced off his chest and he jumped on it before it exploded in order to save everyone around him” (Bateson). The events that soldiers witness are obvious cases as to

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1168 Words | 5 Pages

When a new officer “found two rats on his blankets tussling for the possession of a severed hand” (138), the company turned the event into a joke. Instead of worrying about how sickening the event is, they turn it into a joke; One who cannot make light of the horrific will start to break down psychologically. As a part of gaining a stoic approach towards life, Graves starts to become emotionally detached. “Those who are killed can’t complain” (115), he says in reference to splitting up the money of those who died. By looking at the war from a purely pragmatic point of view, Graves is able to ignore the terror of combat.

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941 Words | 4 Pages

Joseph Lee builds the theme by comparing the narrator’s thoughts before and after truly seeing the German prisoners. At first, his “mad impulse was all to smite and slay, / [and] To spit upon [them]” (Lee 3-4), but after seeing how their faces displayed “doubt, despair, and disillusionment” (9), the narrator instantly feels a connection with the enemy. The alliteration of “smite”, “slay”, and “spit” emphasizes the narrator’s anger and vengefulness, while the alliteration of “doubt”, “despair”, and “disillusionment” highlights the mental and emotional impact the war had on the soldiers. These struggles are shared by all soldiers, and they can understand each other despite fighting on opposite sides of the war. The narrator is able to empathize with his enemy, causing a brief friendship to form.

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231 Words | 1 Pages

Sniper expresses this through his confusion by not knowing why he shot his brother. The sniper does not know why he did it and then continues to say that he was angry at him because of something he had done before. Furthermore, the author conveys that war has no boundaries through separation.

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1768 Words | 8 Pages

Dangerous and intense situations typically lead to certain devastating consequences to a persons both emotional and physical health. As result of these experiences, there is often not only exterior injuries, but also the non visual psychological damage that is just as hard, if not harder, to resolve. One commonality throughout all wars is this unseen casualty known as PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. Tim O’Brien, veteran of the Vietnam war, demonstrates how PTSD affects soldiers in countless ways in his novel The Things They Carried. He uses fictional but lovable characters that readers can easily relate to, intensifying their emotional engagement in the book.

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438 Words | 2 Pages

After shooting the enemy, “The sniper looked at his enemy falling. The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse” (227) this quote is important because it explains how this is difficult for the sniper and how he is already hurt by what he did. This connects to the theme statement because it shows how the sniper sacrificed his happiness to win the war.

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624 Words | 3 Pages

This shows how the sniper’s actions without thought affect him for the worse. O’Flaherty establishes the theme of “The Sniper” by using description and irony. After the sniper turns over the dead body, he realizes what he has done. He was not thinking when he shot the enemy.

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506 Words | 3 Pages

After staging his own death, the enemy sniper moves out into the open, a clear and easy shot. “Then, when the smoke cleared, [the sniper] peered across and uttered a cry of joy.” “The sniper looked at his enemy falling.” “Then the sniper turned over the death body, and looked into the face of his brother. I regret his actions.

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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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277 Words | 2 Pages

Surprisingly, he seems undisturbed. Here, the poet uses, "now in my dial,"to point out the idea that the shooter is in fact a sniper, and this soldier seems to be recounting his actions. He may have been unshaken at the time of the shooting, but now he

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