Name: Tram Dang
Level: 112
Civil War: Brother vs. Brother How do people feel when they fight with their brothers or their family members? How do they feel when they hurt or lose any part of their body? Do they feel good? Those are exactly the things that the sniper in Liam O’Flaherty’s story has to suffer. Liam O’Flaherty was a great Irish novelist and short story writer. In his story “The Sniper”, which is about the civil war between Republican and Free Starters in Ireland, the main character has to shoot and gets shot by another sniper who is actually his own brother. By telling this story, O’Flaherty wants to show everybody the huge destruction of wars, especially civil wars. The first part of war destruction is the human mental state. In the war, human feelings are not stable. They change into different moods every second from happy to sad, from eager to angry, from callous to sensitive. The obvious reason for this is killing or being killed, shooting or getting shot. The sniper doesn’t have any choice, but to fight for his life. “[H]is eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death” (par.2). Although he is described as an experienced killer, which means that he has observed death many times before, his mental state still changes differently and unpredictably after killing his enemy. “The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead […] [H]e revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody” (par.22). He tries to kill his enemy by using his smart trick. After succeeding, he turns into disgusting himself and regretting. “He was frightened back to his senses by the shock. His nerves steadied. The cloud of fear