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Transcript

The story takes place in Dublin, Ireland. It was the month of July during the 1920s, when the Irish Civil War was happening.

Exposition: Two opposing snipers lay on the rooftops of a street intersection in Dublin, Ireland, waiting for one of them to make a fatal mistake.

Rising Actions:

The Republican sniper shoots and kills a turret gunner and informer (who is an old woman) of the Free Staters (The opposing side).

The Free State sniper sees the Republican sniper fire, and hits the right forearm of the IRA sniper.

The IRA sniper, wanting to get off of the roof, tricks the opposing sniper into thinking he is dead, then, once he turns away, shoots and kills him.

Climax: The brother climbs down from the roof, and finds out who he killed, his own brother…

The story concludes at that point, so there is no denouement.

The theme of this story is that war reduces people to mere objects. In war, nobody has a name or personality, and war doesn't care if you are brothers, you are just a target. O’Flaherty doesn’t give any character a name in the story to greater emphasize this point.

Some quotes that depict the theme are:

"The turret opened. A man’s head and shoulders appeared, looking toward the sniper. The sniper raised his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall. The woman darted toward the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman whirled round and fell with a shriek into the gutter." The sniper does not care for the fact that he is targeting an old woman, all he cares about is that she is his enemy.

"Then when the smoke cleared he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his death agony. He struggled to keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward, as if in a dream. The rifle fell from his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over, bounded off the pole of a barber’s shop beneath, and then clattered on the pavement." This exemplifies the theme because he feels joy that he killed his enemy, for he does not care about anything else.

"In the street beneath all was still. The armored car had retired speedily over the bridge, with the machine gunner’s head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman’s corpse lay still in the gutter." The driver doesn't care that a corpse is hanging out of his car, nor that a woman is lying lifeless on the street.

The main character is the IRA sniper, and he is a rugged,hardened soldier trained to the horrors of war. This is given by the statement, “His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.”

He takes out a turret gunner and old woman almost without thinking, and when shot in the arm, he only reacts by muttering,”I’m hit,” and dressing the the wound, whereas a normal person would be in intense pain. This shows he is tough and has plenty of experience in wars, and possibly being shot. He is a dynamic, round character because throughout the story, he acts reserved and emotionless, but towards the end, he becomes curious about who he shot, which is very unusual for somebody who has countless kills.

He is the only character that the author goes in depth about, so all of the other characters are flat and static characters.

The Point of View in "The Sniper" is 3rd person limited, with the focus on the thoughts of the Republican Sniper. This is portrayed in the following passage,

"On a rooftop near O’Connell Bridge, a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him lay his rifle and over his shoulders was slung a pair of field glasses. His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic."

This impacts the reader because you only hear the Republican sniper's view and not the other side's.

Both of snipers are very similar, they are both on rooftops facing each other, each rooftop is at basically the same height. Both riflemen are good shots and they both hit each other. This is irony because of the predicament they are in, how everything is so similar.

However, the main instance of irony is that the main character unknowingly kills his brother.

There is no resolution to the story.

Two snipers lay on the rooftops of a street facing each other... They are in a battle against each other for the future of Ireland

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