19 pages • 38 minutes read
Liam O'FlahertyThe Sniper
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Situational Irony
Situational irony results when the audience expects a certain outcome, but the actual outcome is much different, even the opposite. Another way to think about situational irony is a “twist ending.” In “The Sniper,” the sniper kills his own brother when he thinks he has bested a threatening opponent.
Personification
With personification, an author imparts human or humanlike qualities to inanimate objects. O’Flaherty compensates for the anonymity of his characters by using personification. Objects have the vitality that humans in the story lack. For instance, we hear heavy guns “roar[ing]” (Paragraph 1). The armored vehicle comes to life: “The sniper could hear the dull panting of the motor” (Paragraph 7). The vehicle is a “gray monster” (Paragraph 7). When O’Flaherty describes the enemy sniper’s death, he writes that the rifle “bounded off the pole” (Paragraph 19), implying that the object had agency. Similarly, the “bullet flattened itself” (Paragraph 4). Personification shifts the point of view from the individual to the personified object. It adds activity and liveliness to the setting.
Onomatopoeia
With onomatopoeia, a word sounds like the thing that it denotes. O’Flaherty decorates his otherwise desolate setting with this device. While the landscape is dangerous and sparsely populated, it is hardly silent or boring. O’Flaherty explains that the sniper takes a “whiff” of his cigarette, which mimics the sound of the cigarette smoke itself (Paragraph 4). O’Flaherty later describes a bullet “whiz” near the sniper (Paragraph 5). Such a description helps the reader empathize with the protagonist and the danger he is in; the reader can hear the bullet.
When the second sniper dies, his rifle “clattered” on the pavement (Paragraph 10). The body hits the ground with a “dull thud” (Paragraph 20). “Dull thud” exhibits assonance, or repetition of vowel sounds. There is a juxtaposition between the beauty of language and the horrors and brutality of war.
