This essay is comparing and contrasting four texts - Futility (Wilfred Owen), In Flanders Fields (John McCrae), The Sniper (Liam O’Flaherty) and The Darkness Out There (Penelope Lively) - to show how war influences people’s actions and morality.
In the poem Futility, there is an idea that war is futile, which is expressed through the imagery that the author uses. Similarly, in the short story ‘The Sniper’, there is also an idea that war is futile, but this is expressed through the sniper’s actions and thoughts. In the last two lines of the poem Futility, it is written, “O what made fatuous sunbeams toil - To break earth's sleep at all?” From this extract, there is an idea that the war has affected the narrator to the point where he thinks that life is pointless. Two quotes that directly express the futility of war are, “Always it woke him, even in France…
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“...man who is used to looking at death...the enemy...cursing the war… the enemy… looked into his brother’s face.” These quotes show how dehumanized the main character is, as he continuously refers to the Free Stater sniper as the enemy, not a person - made from flesh and blood. This shows how dehumanized the character has become as it seems that the sniper doesn’t seem to realize the idea of death until he kills his brother. The sniper in this story thinks that what he is doing is justifiable, until he realised that he had killed his brother. He then feels that all the work he has put into the war is wasted and is futile. This also shows that the war has divided families and friends to settle disagreement of a ruling party. In this war setting, the people have convinced themselves that it is acceptable to kill; in which the sniper has taken upon, so when he kills his brother, the reader suddenly sees war as an excuse to kill another human being- and therefore,