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Contrasts and Contradictions
The internal conflict that plays out in the experiences and feelings of the Republican sniper represents a relatable and comprehensible microcosm of the larger conflict that envelops the nation during the Irish Civil War. His personal story presents the contradictions that wrack the nation and portrays the contrasts of wartime experience as an individual experiences them.
For example, from the story’s opening lines, the stoic sniper whose eyes suggest he has seen too much death is also depicted as young and thoughtful, the kind of man who might, in other circumstances, have been a student. Similarly, the nation has just emerged from a world war, experienced great loss, and undergone its own conflict over British rule. The governments that should establish law and maintain order are the very entities that lay siege to the Four Courts area where the sniper is posted.
The setting of the story also captures these contrasts. From his rooftop post, the sniper can see Dublin in the moonlight of a summer night and the river flowing under the bridge. What should be a usual and pleasant June night is punctuated by gunfire, tellingly described as sounding “like dogs barking on lone farms,” an ironically peaceful image. The sniper is doing normal things—having a snack, a sip of whiskey, and a smoke—yet around him the buildings are “besieged,” and the “heavy guns roared.” In this situation, a young man becomes a killer, city streets become a battlefield, homes serve as snipers’ nests, and a rifle smacks a common barber’s pole as it falls. Throughout, the commonplace contrasts with the chaotic, and war compels people to act against their neighbors in ways that contradict their previous civil relationships.
The Fickle Appeal of Combat
“The Sniper” is about a fierce duel between enemy snipers, each with a duty to his military force. Neither is more motivated than the other to carry out that duty, and both feel the “lust of battle” that the narrator describes because both act as soldiers should. But the appeal of combat is both fickle and fleeting, formed by an uneven mix of triumph, fear, doubt, rage, and waiting. War is not a consistently heroic tale but is a story of duty interrupted by cigarette breaks. Readers do not know whether the enemy sniper goes through moments of exhaustion and hunger, or whether he rejoices when he wounds the Republican sniper, as the Republican sniper does when he kills his enemy. The limited perspective permits readers access to the varied thoughts and feelings of the only one character—the Republican sniper—predisposing them to be glad when he survives.
Yet the protagonist’s responses to events alone are sufficient to explore the idea that the appeal of combat is fickle and fleeting. At his highest moments, the Republican sniper behaves as expected in a war story. He meticulously kills two enemies right away and keeps his wits about him when his enemy wounds him. With heroic effort, the protagonist follows his training to dress his wound, take stock of his situation, and plan an escape. When he succeeds, he lets out a “cry of joy.”
However, the “death agony” of the enemy sniper unnerves the Republican sniper, and his joy vanishes, leading him to curse everyone involved in the war. Although a stout drink of whiskey temporarily restores the “reckless” excitement of combat, he soon feels the need to leave his post on the rooftop and cannot shake his curiosity about the man he killed. Despite his “fanatical” devotion to his cause, the appeal of combat wavers in him.
The Fractured State
O’Flaherty sets his story in Ireland, a nation once united but now divided in a bitter civil war. He carefully constructs “The Sniper” to embed the idea that the nation is broken in half by competing ideologies and desires for its future by building in examples of dualism, in nearly mirrored sets of actions and reactions. This dualism, by the story’s end, reveals an ironic similarity between the two snipers and, in turn, about the two sides of the civil conflict that has divided the nation. The pairings in the story are many: two military forces battle each other; the nation is divided into two political camps. The protagonist and antagonist, two similarly trained soldiers, face each other from two rooftops across a street. Both snipers deploy a nearly equal set of skills to hide themselves and to take action, and each sniper makes a single mistake that betrays him and causes him to be shot.
When, at the story’s end, the identity of the dead sniper is revealed, along with his relationship to the Republican sniper, O’Flaherty is able to comment subtly on the conflict itself. The people fighting each other have a shared and long history and ethnic unity, now divided tragically by opposing ideas created largely by an external force in the form of British rule. By extension, the story warns that any conflict that pits brother against brother, citizen against citizen, fractures a natural unity. The conflict itself is the enemy.
