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    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper"
    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper"
    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper"
    Ebook33 pages26 minutes

    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535839631
    A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper" - Gale

      1

      The Sniper

      Liam O'Flaherty

      1923

      Introduction

      The Sniper, a story about the Irish civil war, was Liam O'Flaherty's first published piece of fiction. It appeared in 1923 in the London publication The New Leader. Over the years, it has been reprinted several times, and as of 2004 it could be found in O'Flaherty's Collected Stories. The Sniper helped set O'Flaherty firmly on the writer's path. Upon reading it, Edward Garnett, an influential London editor, recommended a publisher bring forth the novel that O'Flaherty had just completed. Thus began a literary career that lasted for three decades.

      O'Flaherty was intensely involved in Irish politics as a young man, joining both the Communist party in Ireland and later the Republican army. Nonetheless, throughout his career, O'Flaherty only wrote a handful of overtly political stories. In the fall of 1922, after taking part in the Four Courts incident as a Republican soldier, O'Flaherty fled Ireland. Settling in London, O'Flaherty procured a typewriter and wrote The Sniper while the devastating Irish civil war was still going on. O'Flaherty drew upon his experiences to create a piece of fiction that shows that the civil war had repercussions stretching far beyond the field of battle. O'Flaherty places his protagonist, a sniper, in a kill or be killed situation. After the sniper shoots an enemy soldier, he discovers he has just killed his brother. The sniper's emotional detachment throughout the story, coupled with this startling ending, allows O'Flaherty to indirectly address the way in which the Irish civil war led to the disunity of Irish society.

      Author Biography

      Liam O'Flaherty was born in 1896 on Inishmore, an Aran Island off the coast of Ireland. O'Flaherty wrote his first piece of fiction when he was about seven years old. He also proved to be an exceptional student, and a visiting cleric thought he showed an aptitude for the priesthood. In 1908 O'Flaherty won a scholarship to attend a Catholic school, Rockwell College, on Ireland's mainland, where he studied until 1912. He continued his

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