payment page
“The Sniper” is generally realistic in its setting and descriptive details. Almost like a report from the front, it presents events in a style that privileges a journalistic eye above a preference for imagery. When O’Flaherty does include touches of visual imagery, therefore, they take on additional significance that is sometimes symbolic in surprising ways. For example, conventional imagery often associates light with good things and dark with bad. People see well in the light while the dark obscures vision; light is typically symbolic of knowledge or safety, whereas darkness signifies mystery or danger. “The Sniper” reverses this association.
The story takes place at night during a battle. Usually, on a city street at night, light is needed and welcome. Streetlights offer safe passage. In “The Sniper,” by contrast, light is in fact dangerous, while darkness provides cover. The mere flicker of a match reveals the Republican sniper’s position, while the brief flash of a muzzle helps him locate his enemy’s position. The moonlight is not much help because it reveals the sniper’s post, as when the informant points up at him, ultimately dooming his enemy when he stands up and is “clearly silhouetted” against the twilit backdrop of the sky. A more complete darkness would have prevented either sniper from killing the other, and would have saved them injury and death, at least for the time being. The same light that endangers the story’s protagonist is what allows him to kill the informer and the man in the armored car; in this way, light harms more than it helps.
Just as civil war has subverted normal life in Dublin so that death in the street is now a reality, the cultural associations with light and darkness are inverted, suggesting that war turns life upside down.
