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War is dehumanizing.
O’Flaherty’s story emphasizes the dehumanizing effects of conflict and warfare. As if symbolically drawing attention to this simple yet profound point, each of the characters is nameless. The city, the bridge, and the causes, “Republican” and “Free State,” are named, yet the two central characters remain unnamed. They are simply two snipers placed on opposing rooftops, performing their duties as expected. They are not individuals but cogs in the machinery of war, replaceable and expendable.
The sniper’s duties, in turn, lead the protagonist to dehumanize himself and others, an attitude that he will eventually regret and abandon. He acts without thinking, firing on and killing the old woman and the man in the armored car’s turret, without indicating any concern. In the battle with the opposing sniper, he reveals no emotion, only an instinctive desire to survive and happiness with having succeeded. It is only after “[t]he lust of battle died in him” that naturally humane and sympathetic responses emerge, as he is “revolted” at seeing “the shattered mass of his dead enemy” and finds himself “cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.” His humanity returns in full to him when he looks into the dead man’s face. That this man turns out to be the protagonist’s brother, divided from him by opposing viewpoints on Irish sovereignty, means that the sniper must literally deal with having killed kin while also being forced symbolically to recognize the fundamental kinship between individuals caught up in the machinery of war.
War subverts the daily rhythms of life.
The routine activities of eating, resting, studying, and working are part of the protagonist’s experience during the brief hours of the story, but none are normal and all involve risk because he is at war. This young man, whom the narrator suggests might be a student were it not for the war, forgets to eat while he is on duty until hunger forces him to eat quickly. The simple action of smoking a cigarette, no doubt relaxing during the tense moments on the rooftop, endangers him. Despite his care, the match exposes his location, and he can take only two puffs before he must douse the cigarette. He can’t even stand up without risk and must crawl from place to place.
The same conditions apply to the story’s other characters. A conversation on the street, a decision to point and look up—any common action can bring injury or death. In a telling detail, when the opposing sniper teeters on the rooftop, his rifle slips from his hand and strikes a barber shop pole before landing on the street. This macabre detail reminds readers that the street across which the snipers face each other is, on a normal day, a place of commerce and neighborly activities and interactions. During the battle, even the barber’s pole contributes to the chaos that replaces the usual rhythms of life.
Factionalism erodes higher moral values.
The Republican sniper experiences, during the short hours of the story, an allegiance to his faction that compels him to risk his life and to take others’ lives. He kills the man in the “gray monster” because he is in an “enemy car,” allied with the opposing faction. He dispatches the woman who points out his position, and he lets out “a cry of joy” when the opposing sniper falls. The Republican sniper performs these actions during the “lust of battle,” and they seem right to him. The claims of his cause tell him he acts morally, and the story’s setting confirms this moral assumption. The Four Courts area, a seat of government and civil order, is a battlefield, and the rules of civil society are in abeyance.
However, the sniper cannot sustain the commitment that the “cold gleam of the fanatic” in his eyes represents. What seems to shift his understanding of moral behavior is the way the body of his opponent falls. After witnessing the fall and hearing the “dull thud” of the impact that transforms the body into a “shattered mass,” the remorseful protagonist can hardly speak and flings his weapon down. It is not duty or allegiance but the sudden pressing need to know who his enemy was that drives him to risk entering the street. To see the face of the man he killed matters enough, as the excitement of combat ebbs away and his wound exhausts him, that he exposes himself to machine gun fire. The fact that he killed his brother, in the story’s final twist, suggests that fanatical devotion to a faction’s goals temporarily caused the sniper to forget the higher value of brotherhood.
