The Sniper Short Story Summary and Thematic Paragraph

    There is a revolution for independence taking place in Ireland in the early 1920’s. It's now evening in the city of Dublin during the month of June and a republican sniper is laying on the roof tops by the O'Connell bridge watching for any enemies. Hungry with nothing to eat since morning, he continued to lay on the roof until he decided to quickly smoke a cigarette when an undercover sniper out of nowhere shoots at him and luckily gets missed by the bullet. He then noticed an armoured vehicle crossing the bridge and stopping. The sniper anxiously wanted to  start shooting at the vehicle but there was no point since the armour in the vehicle was too strong. He then spots an old women that is walking towards the vehicle who noticed the republican sniper and points her finger towards him. The armoured vehicle spots the sniper and gets out the machine turret and begins to shoot the sniper on the roof tops. The sniper had no choice but to shoot the man on the turret so that is what he did. Fortunately he also shoots the old women (who he realizes was an informer) falls into a gutter. The sniper steadily shoots the  man using the turret as well. As the armoured vehicle moved away after the tragic event, the Sniper still had to deal with the other undercover sniper in the other end of the street. Then as soon as he started to think everything was over, gets shot by the enemy in the other end. The sniper realizes the bullet was shot into his arm. As he rips his shirt using his pocket knife, he opens his field dressing kit in one of his other pockets and opens an iodine bottle, he dips some of the liquid to his wound as he applies bandages to the wound and then comes up with a plan to get rid of the enemy sniper once and for all. His plan was to fool the undercover sniper on faking his death by taking off his cap and placing it over the muzzle of his rifle. He then decides to put the muzzle over the parapet so the enemy can see it and get distracted by it, so then the Sniper can have a perfect chance to shoot his enemy. He becomes very successful by lifting his revolver above the edge of the parapet and shooting him. He gets a good shot and watches as his enemy sniper falls off the roof in the opposite side of the street. Curious, the Sniper gets to the streets and wanted to know how the enemy sniper looked like. Once he reached to him he realizes the enemy sniper was his own brother.

    War can not only lead to harsh conflict but can also affect many families in a negative way. In this case, in this short story "The Sniper", the main character the "Sniper" shoots the enemy sniper who realizes that the enemy was his own blood brother. This shows the cruelty that can occur during conflict, which can not only split peoples ideologies by starting violence, but can also split family to end up killing one another. Realizing that the brothers didn't know each others identities and thinking that the two of them were just enemies are another reason the author shows that violence and conflict can tear families apart.