No Rules in War In the years of the Irish civil war, those who agreed with the treaty between the Irish and the British, the Free State, were fighting with those who were against it, the Irish Republican Army. The treaty gave the Irish Free State more independence from Britain, but its opposers, or the Irish Republican Army (IRA) did not see the document as a freedom, but rather as a drawback on irish life. In 1921, ten days after the treaty was signed, tensions between the Free State and the IRA rose to the point of war. The people of Ireland were split into the two sides because of their beliefs on the treaty. A man by the name of Liam O’Flaherty abandoned his quest for the priesthood to contribute to the war. He became a …show more content…
A young sniper of the IRA lay watching on the rooftop for his enemy. While in the darkness of night, the sniper made the risky decision to light a cigarette. His enemy shoots at him after seeing the spark of light from the match. Soon after the gunshots, he sees an armored car of the enemy coming towards him. It stops and an elderly woman walks up to it. The sniper notices that she is an informer seconds before the armored car starts to shoot at him. He shoots and kills the man who was in the enemy car, then the woman informer. After the sniper revealed his location for the second time by shooting the two enemies, the man on the opposite roof began to attack him, shooting the republican sniper in the …show more content…
Family members could be fighting against each other, possibly killing a relative. Before a civil war begins, the country has one army, so the soldiers of that army train together and know each other like brothers. Once the separation of the two sides occurs, the army becomes split as well. In O'Flaherty’s short story, “The Sniper,” The opposing armies were once one army together. Therefore, the soldiers on both sides know some of the enemies as friends, or as O’Flaherty said in his metaphor when the sniper looked into the face of whom he had killed,