The Sniper

“The Sniper” can be considered wartime literature. Both the story’s dark setting and thinly developed characters are characteristic of this genre. The city of Dublin is a character unto itself, described by specific place names (Four Courts and the River Liffey), and besieged by warfare. O’Flaherty describes Dublin as a victim of the street fighting that ravaged the city during June 1922, the opening month of the Irish Civil War. The city is “enveloped in darkness” (Paragraph 1). The only light is a “dim light,” provided by the moon. The motif of darkness contributes to the theme of anonymity. No one is recognizable to the sniper nor to the reader, who is at the mercy of the sniper’s limited third-person narration. Neither the sniper nor other characters are named. Even stereotypical identities are blurred; for example, the old woman would have represented an unthreatening persona during peacetime, but in this context she’s a would-be informant for the enemy. This motif of identity ambiguity climaxes at the end of the story, when the sniper does not know the identity of his brother and shoots him.

We gain some sense of the protagonist through his actions and appearance. He weighs the risk involved in each of his decisions. Otherwise, the reader knows very little about him. O’Flaherty does not give him emotional depth until near the end of the story, when he is overtaken by grief as he watches the enemy sniper collapse. Before shooting the enemy, the protagonist does not act on his emotions, nor does O’Flaherty tell the reader what he is thinking, beyond his series of risk calculations. The protagonist doesn’t yet know the identity of the fallen man. His sudden remorse can perhaps be explained by realizing that this enemy, a fellow sniper, could very well have been himself.

O’Flaherty subverts landscapes as well as social roles. A city street is usually safe and busy. In contrast, “The Sniper” shows a city that is dark and nearly empty but for lifeless bodies and armed combatants. While pre-Modernist literature glorified battle, this story presents war as unstable and tragic. O’Flaherty ends his piece abruptly. It mirrors war. Like with war, there is a lack of satisfaction or resolution.