The Sniper

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The Sniper

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Characters
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Sources
Further Reading

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 education at Blackrock College from 1912 to 1913, also run by priests, where he organized a group of students who supported the Republican cause in Ireland. In 1914 he entered Holy Cross College in Dublin, which was a seminary designed to prepare young men for the priesthood. O'Flaherty, however, did not want to become a priest, and left after one semester. He then went to University College, also in Dublin, where he studied for a year from 1914 to 1915.

World War I disrupted O'Flaherty's studies. He left college in 1915 to join the Irish Guards of the British army. During the war, he served in France and Belgium. Due to shellshock, O'Flaherty was given a medical discharge from the military in 1917.

After a few months in Ireland, O'Flaherty spent the next two years traveling about and doing odd jobs. He went to London, South America, Canada, and the United States. He also crewed on ships sailing the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. During this period, his brother urged him to write about his experiences. O'Flaherty wrote four short stories, but they were rejected by publishers, and O'Flaherty gave up writing.

O'Flaherty returned to Ireland in 1920 and became involved in politics. He supported the Republican cause and also joined the Communist party. In 1922 he and a group of unemployed men seized control of a public building. They raised the Communist flag over it and declared an Irish socialist revolution. In the Irish civil war, he aligned himself with the Republicans, opposing the division of Ireland, and took part in the Four Courts rebellion. A fugitive from the Irish authorities, O'Flaherty fled to London in 1922.

Once again O'Flaherty took up writing. In 1923, he published his first short story, "The Sniper,"

in a British weekly paper. After that, he wrote steadily. Later that year, he published his first novel, Thy Neighbor's Wife. He spent the next three decades as a professional writer.

Most of O'Flaherty's novels and short stories take place on the Aran Islands of his youth. However, some of his most well-known works have Dublin as their setting, like The Informer (1925), which won the 1926 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in England for the best novel of the year, as well as a prize in France. O'Flaherty also wrote nonfiction and stories in his native tongue, Irish Gaelic. In 1932 O'Flaherty and a group of other well-known writers founded the Irish Academy of Letters.

O'Flaherty retired from writing in the mid-1950s, moved to Dublin shortly thereafter, but spent much of his time traveling. He died in 1984 in Dublin.

Plot Summary

Late at night, a lone Republican sniper waits atop a rooftop in Dublin, Ireland. It is June of 1922. Nearby Republican and Free States forces battle over the Four Courts judicial building and throughout the city.

The sniper has been on the rooftop since the morning. Now he eats a sandwich and drinks some whiskey. He risks lighting a cigarette for a quick puff. The light from his cigarette alerts an enemy soldier to his presence. A bullet flies toward the sniper's rooftop. He puts out the cigarette and switches position.

However, the flash of the rifle tells the sniper his enemy's location. The sniper realizes that his enemy also has taken cover—on the roof of the house across the street.

In the street below, an armored car moves. The sniper knows it is an enemy car but it would be useless to shoot at it. As he watches, he sees an old woman approaching the car. She speaks to the soldier manning the turret, pointing at the sniper's rooftop. As the turret opens and the soldier looks out, the sniper raises his rifle and shoots him, killing him. Then the sniper shoots the old woman as she tries to run away.

From the roof opposite, the enemy sniper fires. His bullet hits the sniper in the arm, and he drops his rifle. The sniper examines his wound. He realizes that the bullet is still lodged in his arm and that the arm is fractured. He painfully applies a field dressing and then rests from his effort.

The sniper knows he must devise a plan. He cannot leave the roof because the enemy is blocking any exit from the building, but if he is still on the roof in the morning, Free State soldiers will come for him and kill him. He must kill his enemy before morning so he can escape.

The sniper places his cap on the muzzle of the rifle, which is now useless because he cannot operate it with only one good arm. He pushes the rifle upward so the cap appears over the edge of the roof. In response, the enemy sniper shoots, hitting the cap dead center. The sniper lets his rifle fall forward. He lets the hand holding the rifle dangle over the side of the roof. Then the rifle clatters to the street. Finally, the sniper drags his hand back.

When the sniper peers over the roof, he sees that his plan has fooled the enemy into thinking he is dead. The other sniper now stands uprights and looks across the street that separates the two houses. The sniper lifts his revolver. Taking careful aim, the sniper fires and hits the enemy. The other sniper falls over the edge of the roof down to the pavement below. On the street below, he lies still.

Now that the battle is over, the sniper feels remorse. He curses the civil war and his own role in it. Then he hurls the revolver to the ground. It goes off, sending a bullet past his head. The shock of the near miss returns him to his senses.

The sniper takes a drink of whiskey and decides to descend from the roof and try to rejoin his company. Retrieving his revolver, the sniper crawls down into the house. Once at the street level, the sniper has an urge to see the man he killed. He might know the man from the army before the civil war began. The sniper runs into the street, drawing a spate of machine gun fire from a distance. He throws himself on the ground besides the corpse of the enemy sniper. He turns the body over. He looks into the face of his brother.

Characters

The Enemy Sniper

The Enemy Sniper is the Sniper's main opponent in the story. A member of the Free State army, he still shares similarities with the Sniper. The two men are engaged in the same role. The Enemy Sniper, too, is a good shot, enough so that he wins the respect of the Sniper by the end of the story. His physical presence, on a rooftop across the street, further reinforces the idea that he is a mirror image for the Sniper.

The Enemy Sniper wants to kill the Sniper. He appears to have the advantage after shooting and injuring the Sniper. He makes a fatal error, however, when he falls for the Sniper's ruse. Once he thinks he has killed the other man, the Enemy Sniper stands up on his rooftop, thus making himself a clear mark. The Sniper shoots him, and he falls to the street below, dead. After that, the Sniper—along with the reader—discovers that the two snipers are brothers.

The Old Woman

The Old Woman points out the Sniper's location on the rooftop to the Soldier in the Turret. The Sniper shoots and kills her.

The Sniper

The Sniper is the main character of the story. This young man is a member of the Republican army and his eyes have "the cold gleam of the fanatic." A hardened fighter, the Sniper has become a man "used to looking at death." In his role as a soldier, he functions efficiently and automatically. For instance, when he gets shot, he applies his own field dressing despite the excruciating pain. Only occasionally does he allow himself to make poor decisions, notably when he decides to risk lighting a cigarette, which alerts the enemy soldiers to his location on the roof. He also runs into the street to find out the identity of the Enemy Sniper, drawing machine gun fire upon himself.

The Sniper has been positioned atop a roof in Dublin. His role in the battle is not clear, but the streets of Dublin are awash with fighting, and he likely has been assigned to shoot enemy targets in the streets below. Once the Free State soldiers learn of his presence, the Sniper becomes involved in a standoff with the Enemy Sniper on a rooftop across the street. The Sniper cannot leave his rooftop since the Enemy Sniper has him covered. Nor can he risk staying on the roof until morning, which assuredly would lead to his death at the hands of Free State soldiers. Injured by the Enemy Sniper, the Sniper devises a clever plan to draw fire and make the Enemy Sniper think he is dead. Once his ruse succeeds, the Enemy Sniper lets down his guard and stops keeping his cover, so the Sniper is able to fatally shoot him.

Once the Enemy Sniper is dead, the battle-hardened Sniper undergoes a transformation. The excitement of the battle fades. Looking over the rooftop at the three people he has just killed—the Soldier in the Turret, the Old Woman, and the Enemy Sniper—the Sniper feels remorse. His disgust for the civil war manifests itself physically, as his teeth begin to chatter, and he starts cursing both himself and the war. When the Sniper recovers his senses, his fear dissipates so much that he even risks being shot at to learn the identity of the Free State soldier he has just shot. Only then does he realize that he has killed his own brother.

Throughout the story, the Sniper remains a somewhat mysterious, one-dimensional character. The narrative reveals little of his feelings about what is happening around him, nor does it even share his reaction to the knowledge that he has become his brother's murderer. Instead, the story directs the Sniper's actions and thoughts to the battle. The Sniper's only identity is that of a solider.

The Soldier in the Turret

The Soldier in the Turret is a member of the Free State army. He learns of the Sniper's location on the rooftop from the old woman. Before he and his men can go after the Sniper, the Sniper kills him with a rifle bullet.

Themes

Civil War

The complementary themes of civil war and warfare are the most obvious in "The Sniper." The story takes as its setting Dublin, Ireland, during the Irish civil war. The fighting began in 1922, after the Irish Parliament voted to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty dividing the island of Ireland into northern and southern parts. Before the treaty, Irish nationalists had united against the British, their common foe, or against Northern Irish Protestants who supported union with England. After the treaty was signed, however, Irish aggression was turned inward. Over the next few years, the Irish people remained bitterly split, and some took up arms against their friends, family members, and countrymen.

O'Flaherty sets the stage of the civil war in his opening paragraph with sensory descriptions such as the "heavy guns [that] roared" at the "beleaguered Four Courts" and the "machines guns and rifles [that] broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms." O'Flaherty concludes this first paragraph with the factual statement, "Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war." This simple statement both serves to place the conflict and to undercut the devastation that this war has caused.

Though the story is quite brief, the reader can infer that the Irish civil war has brought great change to its protagonist. The phrase that the sniper has "the face of a student, thin and ascetic" implies that the sniper may have recently been a student but has taken up the arms of a soldier. Now warfare has transformed him. His "deep and thoughtful" eyes are "used to looking at death," and they even hold "the cold gleam of the fanatic" in his dedication to the Republican cause. The protagonist is only one of many young men who have joined either one side or the other of this brutal civil war.

The story also makes clear that this civil war has driven enormous rifts into Irish society. After the sniper has killed his enemy, he grows curious about the other man's identity. "He wondered did he know him," and he even speculates, "Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army." With the final sentence, however, the civil war's power to divide takes on even greater significance: "Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face." This sentence tells the reader that members of the same family could become enemies because of civil war. It also underscores the long-lasting repercussions of warfare that breaks up a society.

Warfare

A few key details in the story emphasize the bizarre landscape of warfare. The sniper undergoes a number of emotional responses to the battle that non-soldiers or those who have not taken part in battle are likely to find unusual. At the beginning of the story, during his stakeout, the sniper "had been too excited to eat." Right before he shoots the enemy sniper, his "hand trembled with eagerness." When he sees that he has hit his enemy, he "uttered a cry of joy." All the words O'Flaherty uses to describe the sniper's reaction to meeting and vanquishing his enemy are positive, anticipatory words. In the world of warfare, killing a fellow human being is a victory; for in war, soldiers, like the sniper, face a situation where they must kill or be killed.

Topics for Further Study

Research the Irish civil war. After you have conducted your research, write a paper analyzing "The Sniper" from a historical point of view.
Imagine that you are directing a movie version of "The Sniper." How would you direct the final scene? What kind of emotions would you ask your actor to convey?
Write an essay describing how you think the sniper feels at learning he has killed his brother and what he does next. Does this event keep him from further participation in the Irish civil war?
Investigate another civil war or conflict that has divided families, friends, and communities. Use what you have learned to write your own short story exploring the way that such conflict affects members of society.
The events surrounding the Irish civil war brought to the forefront many important political leaders. Research one of these leaders, either a Republican or a Free Stater, and find out about his influence on Irish history.
Find out more about the role that religion has played in Ireland's history from the late 1800s through the present day.

By the end of the story, the protagonist has undergone a wide range of feelings stemming from his own actions. With his enemy dead, the sniper feels regret at what he has done. After the "lust of battle died in him," his body reacts by shuddering and sweating, and his teeth chatter. His mind gets involved in denying his situation as "he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody." However, even these regrets only last a short time. He throws down his revolver, and it accidentally goes off, returning him to his senses. He also bolsters his courage and brings himself back to the proper state of mind by taking a drink of whiskey. Again able to face the state of warfare, laughing, the sniper descends from the rooftop to rejoin his company and continue his role as a soldier. By the end of the story, the sniper's emotions have moved in a circular pattern, from excitement to nervousness to remorse and back to excitement.

Survival and Isolation

The concept of survival underscores the entire story. Even before the sniper kills any of the Free State soldiers, he knows "there were enemies watching." The sniper's actions are driven by his desire for survival. He must kill anyone who has the capacity to bring about his destruction. So the soldier manning the armored tank must be taken out. Indeed, anyone who takes part in this warfare can become an enemy, even an old woman who becomes an informer with a few simple words and the point of a finger.

The sniper's main combatant and the biggest obstacle to his survival is the Free State sniper on the rooftop across the street. The man has the power to keep the sniper pinned down throughout the night, but he knows that "[M]orning must not find him wounded on the roof." Such an event would mean certain death. The sniper has little choice but to devise a plan, even though it is a long shot, to kill his enemy first.

The fact that the sniper is isolated on his rooftop emphasizes his need to depend upon his own wits, courage, and abilities for survival. Though other men fight side by side with their companies, for instance, at the Four Courts and in the streets of Dublin, the sniper conducts his fight alone. It is up to him to kill the other sniper. No one will come to his aid. Because of his isolation, the sniper finds the resources within himself to overcome fear and pain and continue to fight.

Style

Setting

The setting of "The Sniper" is integral to the narrative, for it draws its action from the Irish civil war. The story takes place in Dublin, Ireland, in June 1922. At this time, the Irish civil war has been going on for several months. The Republicans hold the Four Courts judicial building, but the Free Staters are attacking them with heavy arms.

"The Sniper" also takes place between the hours of dusk and dawn. Beginning as "twilight faded into night," the action of the story instantly becomes more dangerous. The sniper must conduct his battle in the dark. He has only "the dim light of the moon that shone through fleecy clouds" to see by. This lack of clarity has a realistic impact in making his task—difficult even in the light of day—even more challenging. The sniper has to aim at his enemy, about fifty yards away, and get off one fatal shot with a revolver. The lack of light also has symbolic significance: it underscores the murky, ambiguous situation that a civil war poses. The civil war pits friends, neighbors, and even family members against one another. As is borne out by the story's ending, people cannot see very clearly during such a conflict.

Point of View

The narrative takes a limited, third-person point of view. The action is entirely funneled through the protagonist. The reader sees only through his eyes, hears sounds through his ears, and processes events through his thoughts. Despite this limited point of view, readers can clearly follow the action. The sniper observes the old woman on the street below as she talks to the soldier in the turret of the armored car. "She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay," and the sniper—and the reader—knows that she is pining down his location and that the soldiers may well come after him. When the sniper carries out his plan to trick the enemy sniper into thinking that he is dead, he can tell that he has been successful. For the enemy "seeing the cap and rifle fall … was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky." Though the story never gets deep in the mind of the enemy, the reader, like the sniper, knows that the Free Stater "thought that he had killed his man."

This point of view works well with the emotional detachment of the narrative. Rarely does the protagonist show his reaction to the events around him, other than the excitement of the battle and his momentary repulsion at having killed another human being. Even when he learns that the man now lying in a "shattered mass" is his brother, the sniper does not react. Instead, the story ends, leaving the reader to only speculate about his feelings.

Details and Sound

O'Flaherty employs a number of specific details to make his story realistic. He describes the battle sounds taking place around the sniper, and he refers to actual events and places, such as the Four Courts siege and the nearby O'Connell Bridge. The description of the sniper's first aid efforts is also filled with many concrete details, like the "bitter fluid" of the iodine, the "paroxysm of pain [that] swept through him," and his need to tie the ends of the bandage with his teeth. Such details help ground the reader in the action.

O'Flaherty also uses details to emphasize the darkness. The sniper can see only by the "dim light" from the moon and, later, approaching dawn. Even the flare from lighting a cigarette is easily seen. The sniper decides to risk the cigarette, striking a match, taking a drag on the cigarette, and then putting out the light. Though this process takes only a matter of seconds, if that, "[A]lmost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof."

Although the story is rooted in reality, O'Flaherty employs descriptive sound imagery to emphasize the stillness and dark of the night. Throughout Dublin, the machine guns and rifles "broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking on lone farms." When the sniper gets shot and drops his rifle with a clatter, he "thought the noise would wake the dead." Once his personal battle is over, and he has killed all his immediate enemies—the soldier in the turret, the old woman, and the other sniper—"Everywhere around was quiet." This technique emphasizes the danger of the situation, as well as the sniper's complete isolation and his need to vanquish his enemies on his own.

Ending

A. A. Kelly writes in Liam O'Flaherty: The Storyteller that "The Sniper" "with its surprise ending based on coincidence is in the older tradition of Maupassant and O'Henry." Such an ending hinges on an unexpected revelation at the end, be it lighthearted or tragic. Few writers have been able to employ the surprise ending effectively. However, O'Flaherty does so successfully because he has already engaged the reader through the fast-paced action and the unique detachment of the protagonist. The shocking ending seems likely to challenge that detachment, but O'Flaherty refuses to reveal the sniper's reaction to the knowledge that he has murdered his brother. Instead, O'Flaherty leaves it up to the reader to draw conclusions and to wonder how, or if, this event will affect the future choices the sniper makes.

Historical Context

The English in Ireland

In the twelfth century, the English monarch, backed by a large army, declared himself overlord of Ireland. For the next several centuries, English rule was generally confined to the area around Dublin. The English monarchy, however, continued efforts to subdue the entire island, resulting in ongoing Irish rebellion. In the early 1600s, the monarchy overthrew the native Irish political system, bringing the entire country under its control. For the next hundred years, the English created colonies in Ireland. As part of this effort, they drove many Irish from their land and gave estates to English landowners. Religious problems arose as well, since most Irish were Roman Catholics while the new English settlers, who mainly lived in the north, followed the Protestant faith. Laws continually favored Protestants over Catholics.

By the late 1700s, Irish rebels were making repeated efforts to gain some kind of independence. Their efforts were to little avail, and in 1801 the Act of Union formally united Great Britain and Ireland. This law abolished the Irish Parliament; instead, Ireland voted for representatives who served in the British Parliament.

Beginning in the 1870s, a Home Rule movement was on the rise among Irish nationalists, most of whom were Catholics. Supporters demanded some form of self government. They were opposed by Irish Protestants, who were called unionists because they wanted to preserve Ireland's status in the United Kingdom. Irish political leader Charles Parnell, who sat in the British Parliament, led a nationalist party and demanded a separate Irish Parliament. Later, in 1902, a new nationalist political party known as Sinn Féin was formed. Its goal was to secure Irish independence.

Because of these nationalist efforts, by the 1910s, the British Parliament enacted a Home Rule bill. While most of Ireland supported this bill, Protestants in Northern Ireland vowed to resist any home rule by force; they feared that the island would become dominated by the Catholics. The onset of World War I, however, delayed the enactment of home rule in Ireland.

The Easter Rising

Irish home rule supporters were frustrated by this delay. In April 1916, a rebellion known as the Easter Rising began in Dublin. About 1,000 Irish forces rose against British rule. Over the next week, street fighting sprang up throughout Dublin, and Republicans seized some government offices. British soldiers, however, forced the Republican leaders to surrender and executed some of the leaders.

In the aftermath of the Easter Rising, when the elections of 1918 took place, Irish voters backed many members of the Sinn Féin political party as their representatives in the British Parliament, over members of the more moderate Irish party. Sinn Féin advocated complete independence for Ireland, and instead of taking their seats, these Irish Republicans set up a revolutionary government and formed an Irish assembly called Dáil Éireann in Dublin.

Until 1921, a brutal war rocked Ireland. The newly created Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought against the British, resisted efforts to renew British rule, and forced Britain to recognize the Irish government. They relied on guerrilla tactics, to which the English government, represented by the police force known as the Black and Tans, responded with brutal reprisals.

During this period, the divisions between north and south grew, with northern unionists threatening to rebel if they were cast free from Britain. In response, the British government passed the Government of Ireland Act in 1920, which called for two separate parliaments for Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Finally, in 1922, leaders of the Dáil Éireann signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty with Britain. This treaty made 26 of Ireland's 32 counties into the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations, while the six counties of Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom.

Compare & Contrast

1920s: Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Many Irish have long been unhappy with this situation. In the late 1910s, Irish forces rebel and begin fighting with British forces. They seek independence from British rule.
Today: Four-fifths of the island of Ireland makes up the independent Republic of Ireland, or Eire in the Irish language. Northern Ireland makes up the rest of the island, and it is part of the United Kingdom.
1920s: Republicans and Free Staters engage in a deadly and destructive civil war. Republicans refuse to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which makes southern Ireland a dominion within the United Kingdom, known as the Irish Free State. The Republicans want all of the island of Ireland to have independence. Free Staters, however, support this treaty. The civil war carries on from 1921 until 1923, when a cease-fire is declared, with the Free Staters victorious.
Today: After decades of fighting between Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republican Army—the paramilitary arm of Sinn Féin, the two sides agree to a cease-fire in 1998. Troubles, however, still brew in Ireland over the division of the island. In 2004, Protestant and Catholic political parties struggle over ways to share power, and allegations of kidnapping and violence on the part of the IRA still take place.
1920s: Irish political leaders are all men, such as Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, and Arthur Griffith.
Today: Women take a much more active role in politics. In 1990, Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to serve as president of the Republic, and women serve as leaders of political parties.

Irish Civil War

Within Ireland, not everyone supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The British prime minister had even threatened open war on Ireland if the treaty was not accepted. Republicans particularly objected to the oath of allegiance that members of the Dáil Éireann would have to make to the British monarch, as well as the provision that allowed Northern Ireland to remain out of the Irish Free State. Eamon de Valera, head of the Dáil Éireann, would not support the treaty, and he resigned. Elections were held for the new Irish Parliament, which led to the ousting of most of the Republicans. Before the new Parliament could meet, a civil war had broken out between supporters of the treaty, known as Free Staters, and its opponents, called Republicans. In April 1922, Republican forces occupied Dublin's justice buildings, the Four Courts. They came under siege from the Free State forces. For several days in June, the Free Staters bombarded the Four Courts. They retook the buildings and captured the enemy leader. Before their capture, however, the Republicans blew up the Four Courts. Despite this Free State victory, battles continued to take place in Dublin until early July, when Free States forces gained control of the city.

Fighting continued outside of Dublin, and the Irish government (still controlled by Free Staters) initiated official military operations. The government took strong measures to quell the civil war, including executing Republican leaders. Within a few months as well, the Dáil Éireann met to draft and ratify a new constitution for Ireland.

The Irish Free State

The Republican resistance became less organized. By early 1923, Republican forces had ceased fighting. De Valera, the Republican leader, ordered a cease-fire. A few years later, he re-entered the Irish political scene. He formed a new political party and served several times as Ireland's prime minister. In 1937 De Valera drafted a new constitution that made Ireland into a new state, called Éire, which was a republic in all but name. In 1948, Ireland finally gained complete independence. The six counties of Northern Ireland, however, remained part of the United Kingdom.

Critical Overview

"The Sniper" was O'Flaherty's first published short story, and as it would turn out, was different from the main body of his short fiction. O'Flaherty became most known for his stories about nature, animals, and Irish peasants, not for the stories he wrote about urban Ireland. Of his numerous stories, only four stories deal with the Irish civil war, while another handful are set in Irish cities. However, according to James M. Calahan, author of Liam O'Flaherty: A Study of the Short Fiction, O'Flaherty's political stories cannot be separated from the others, for "politics permeate all of his works." In a story like "The Sniper," politics are simply more obvious.

Generally, O'Flaherty's urban stories present a bleak view of humankind. A. A. Kelly, writing in Liam O'Flaherty: The Storyteller, noted that such stories "contain much despair and any humour is at man's expense." The protagonist in "The Sniper" might well fall into the role of an urbanized character "imbued with various forms of self-interest based on … fear."

The few critics who have directly explored "The Sniper" tend to disagree over a crucial aspect: O'Flaherty's position on the Irish civil war. In his 1929 essay "The Position of Liam O'Flaherty," which was published in Bookman, William Troy commended "The Sniper," along with the short story "Civil War," both of which deal with the "real and imagined circumstances" of the Irish civil war. Troy wrote that these stories "constitute the most remarkable record of the period which we are likely to receive: the most complete because derived largely from personal observation and participation; the most reliable because written without any other bias than that of artistic selection." Years later, A. A. Kelly contradicted parts of Troy's statement. Kelly did agree that O'Flaherty drew upon his personal experiences to write "The Sniper." However, she believed that O'Flaherty's "reason for writing is to damn warfare in general as inhuman and debasing." Another critic, James H. O'Brien, would also seem to agree that O'Flaherty condemns warfare. In his discussion of O'Flaherty's short stories, entitled Liam O'Flaherty, O'Brien wrote that "the open, matter-of-fact presentation of the shooting and the pain of the wound makes the revelation that brother has shot brother the final atrocity in a barbaric world." The critics, however, do generally emphasize O'Flaherty's careful attention to detail, although Kelly did believe that the "historic aspect and factual accuracy of the work is secondary."

Of all the critics, Kelly has paid the most attention to "The Sniper." She highlighted such elements as its surprise ending and O'Flaherty's "abruptness and economy of style." Similarly, Calahan noted that, as a writer, O'Flaherty was a "master of the art of omission." Kelly also proposed her belief that the sniper served as a "type figure illustrating all those caught up by warfare and forced to shoot the enemy."

Criticism

Rena Korb

Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In this essay, Korb considers how "The Sniper" demonstrates the division the Irish civil war has inflicted on society.

In crafting his first published short story "The Sniper" O'Flaherty took as his setting and dramatic impetus an issue that he knew well: the Irish civil war of the early 1920s. In this story, two snipers on opposing sides of the conflict face off in a duel. The hero of the story prevails. He kills his enemy, thus assuring his survival, at least for the moment. Only after his enemy is dead, however, does the sniper make a startling revelation: the enemy sniper is his own brother.

The story does not address the problems of the civil war from any historical perspective; notably, O'Flaherty makes no mention of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that sparked the civil war or the ongoing problems the native Irish had with the British rulers. O'Flaherty need not do so, for the Irish and British reading audience in the 1920s was well versed in the ongoing troubles that surrounded Ireland and its relationship to the United Kingdom. Modern readers, as well as non-Irish readers, however, likely may need to be reminded that in the spring of 1922, fighting broke out in Ireland over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. This agreement would make southern Ireland an independent state within the British Commonwealth and leave the six counties in northern Ireland part of Great Britain. Free Staters, who supported the treaty, and Republicans, who opposed it, took up arms and fought for control of Ireland's government and national spirit.

O'Flaherty—who fought for the Republicans at the famous Four Courts rebellion—wrote "The Sniper" within months of this incident; "The Sniper" first appeared in a London magazine in January 1923. So, at the time of the story's writing and publication, the civil war was still going on. The

cease-fire between the two Irish armies was not called until spring of that year. This detail of timing may cause readers to more closely examine O'Flaherty's story for a political message about the civil war. It also immediately renders more provocative O'Flaherty's choice to create a narrative with what A. A. Kelly, writing in Liam O'Flaherty: The Storyteller, calls a "controlled emotional response." Many readers will be struck by the sniper's emotional detachment from the violence around him and the very deaths that he causes. There are different reasons O'Flaherty may have chosen to treat the subject this way, however. By making the sniper less of an individual and more of a type character, O'Flaherty imbues him with him greater symbolic meaning. The sniper comes to represent all soldiers, both Republican and Free Starters. Indeed, the sniper could be any soldier, caught up in any deadly conflict. O'Flaherty's stylistic device also shows his lack of interest in using his writing as any sort of political propaganda. He does not try to use words and thoughts to win the reader into siding with the sniper, though the man served in the same army as O'Flaherty. Nor does he try to manipulate the reader into feeling that the sniper is a monster. Instead, with his carefully chosen words he presents the situation in as straightforward a manner as possible and then retreats, allowing the reader to draw conclusions. He even resists temptation to comment on the sniper's discovery that he has killed his brother. Instead, O'Flaherty ends the story on this devastating, potentially life-altering fact.

Such narrative detachment is in keeping with O'Flaherty's choice not to present an overall picture of the Irish civil war. O'Flaherty does not describe such incidents as the raging battles, the Four Courts seizure and bombing, or the assassinations of major leaders from both sides of the conflict. Instead, O'Flaherty creates only four characters—two of whom appear only briefly—and selects a few specific details that show the effects of the conflict on Irish society. O'Flaherty begins this task in his opening paragraph, describing the noise from the machine guns and rifles that "broke the silence of the night, spasmodically, like dogs barking." O'Flaherty also references the sniper's nearness to the "beleaguered Four Courts [where] the heavy guns roared." However, despite having comrades on the ground who work as a unit in their fight, the Republican sniper faces the conflict alone. He is pinned on a rooftop by the enemy sniper across the street and the armored cars and soldiers down below. Thus in a few sentences, O'Flaherty effectively sets the scene, both for the battle that lies ahead, as well as for the sniper's supreme isolation.

What Do I Read Next?

O'Flaherty's novel The Informer, first published in 1925, is set in the aftermath of the Irish civil war. It tells about an outlaw who is the object of a Dublin manhunt. The Informer is one of O'Flaherty's most well-known pieces of fiction.
Like "The Sniper," O'Flaherty's short story "Civil War," included in the 1925 collection of the same name, explores the experience of the war through two Republican soldiers—one an idealist and one a realist—who are trapped on a rooftop, waiting for death.
Liam O'Flaherty's Ireland (2001), by Peter Costello, features biographical information about O'Flaherty, excerpts from his fiction, and photographs from his time period.
The Letters of Liam O'Flaherty (1996), edited by A. A. Kelly, can provide additional information on this writer.
O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" (1905), Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" (1884), and Saki's "The Open Window" (1914) all provide variations—both humorous and tragic—on the same type of surprise ending employed by O'Flaherty.
James Joyce's Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories about the lives of people in Dublin, includes the masterpiece "The Dead."
Sean O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock, perhaps his most popular, was originally staged in 1924 and set during the Irish civil war. This tragicomedy chronicles the fortunes of one family as they struggle for Irish independence.
Sean O'Faolain's first collection of short stories, Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories, was first published in 1932.

On the one hand, this battle between the two snipers represents the larger battle between the Republicans and the Free Staters. The Republican sniper becomes engaged in fighting both the Free State sniper on the opposing rooftop, as well as Free State forces in the streets below. When the Republican sniper descends from his rooftop at the end of the story, even more Free States forces at the end of the street fire upon him with their machine guns. However, it is the enemy sniper who emerges as his main foe. This is the man whom the Republican sniper most fears and who seems to have the most capability of either killing him or cutting off his escape. The two soldiers thus become engaged in a deadly battle, for the Republican sniper must kill the other if he wants to get off the rooftop alive.

O'Flaherty creates the men as mirror images. Both men have positioned themselves on opposing rooftops, thus reinforcing the idea of similarity. Both men are good shots; the enemy sniper delivers his bullet to the center of the sniper's cap, while the Republican sniper kills his enemy with a single revolver shot from fifty yards away, which is "a hard shot in the dim light." The sniper even notes that he and his enemy may have been in the same company before the disintegration of the Irish army into Republican and Free State companies. O'Flaherty's artistic decision to make the two men so similar reinforces the idea that the civil war has broken strong ties throughout Ireland and shows the extent of the division in Ireland's current political situation. Men in opposing armies only become enemies because they disagree over the governing of their country. If not for this problem, these men could have been colleagues or friends—even brothers. O'Flaherty's subtle demonstration of the snipers' similarity underscores that this disunity is occurring throughout the country and destroying the very fabric of society.

Through O'Flaherty's writing, the Irish civil war also emerges as a battle between individuals. All citizens must take sides. The old woman who alerts the Free State soldier to the sniper's presence on the rooftop becomes an enemy in this act. By pointing out the sniper's location, she directly involves herself in the battle. Because of it, she pays the ultimate price with her life; the sniper kills her with a bullet from his rifle. This detail points to the way that the Irish civil war affects all of Ireland, not merely those directly involved in warfare.

While the civil war holds all the Irish people in its clutches, the fighting has a much greater effect on the combatants, significantly dehumanizing them. The sniper on the rooftop is driven by fear and excitement—at the beginning of the story, O'Flaherty writes that "his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic." The sniper also operates superbly, but more like an automaton than a man. When the sniper gets shot, he feels no pain, "just a deadened sensation"; the arm becomes symbolic of the numbness that he must make himself feel to take part in the war at all. Despite the pain, the sniper proceeds to apply his own field dressing to his broken arm and come up with a plan to kill his enemy. Throughout these events, up through the death of his enemy, the sniper carries himself coolly and efficiently. No doubts about his actions or about the war itself distract him, not even when he kills the raggedy old woman who dies like a dog in the gutter. Only after the gunfire is over, however, after "the lust of the battle died in him," does the sniper show any human response to the deaths that he has caused. "[R]evolted by the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy," he shudders, sweats, and becomes "bitten by remorse." He even, for a brief moment, "gibber[s] to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody." This lapse into human feeling is momentary, however. His nerves soon steady, at which point he even laughs—a gesture that may strike the reader as stunningly inappropriate, though, in fact, it may be a reaction to the insanity of war.

The most significant detail that shows how the civil war disunites the people of Ireland does not emerge until the very end of the story, however. Unbeknownst to them, the two snipers—neither of whom can see the other's face—are brothers. Throughout the ordeal, the sniper had remained true to his cause and pursued the sole aim of vanquishing his enemy. While the men battled it out, the enemy sniper had no individuality; he was simply a Free State soldier. Not until the enemy is dead and his selfhood thus eradicated does the sniper feel a spark of curiosity as to the man's identity. Only when the other man ceases to be a threat does the sniper acknowledge his status as another human instead of merely an enemy soldier.

O'Flaherty chooses to end his story with this surprising sentence, "Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face." The reader is left to wonder about this unexpected development. What kind of relationship did the brothers have? How did two members of the same family come to take opposing sides in the civil war? How will this incident affect the sniper and his future? While these questions remain unanswered by the narrative, the reader sees in this simple statement the breach that the civil war has caused in Irish society. No longer are neighbors, friends, or even family members united. And this dissent, though perhaps with less extreme results, is playing out in other households across Ireland. Further, this dramatic ending highlights the terrible stakes of the civil war. The sniper will carry for the rest of his life the knowledge that he has killed his brother.

By presenting his stark ending but not exploring it, O'Flaherty also emphasizes the universality of civil war. History abounds with examples of how civil wars have broken up families. In the American Civil War, for instance, one man might have fought for the Confederate states while his brother may have enlisted in the Union Army. O'Flaherty's story could exist, with details and locations changed, and tell the tale of any civil war. This universality allows "The Sniper" to be a universally applicable condemnation of civil war. This additional layer only enhances the literary richness of "The Sniper" and makes it a tale that surpasses borders and time.

Source: Rena Korb, Critical Essay on "The Sniper," in Short Stories for Students, Gale, 2005.

William Troy

In the following essay, Troy categorizes O'Flaherty's works by theme and setting, calling "The Sniper" and other works "the most remarkable record" of Dublin's revolutionary period of the early twentieth century.

Liam O'Flaherty, at the age of thirty-two, has written five novels, four volumes of short stories, a biography and a large number of sketches and short stories soon to be gathered together in another collection. His reputation, however, is commensurate neither with this record of sustained creative energy nor with the easily recognizable distinction of his work. Literary popularity is never a matter of significance in speaking about a serious artist; but the reasons behind the critical apathy in the present instance are more interesting than usual. To consider them is to discover something about the mechanism of literary popularity at any time. It is also one excellent means of approaching certain of the essential features of this writer's contribution to the literature of our age. For the two things which are responsible for the neglect of O'Flaherty are at the same time inseparable from the deepest meaning and value of his work: his nationality and his fondness for melodrama.

The disadvantages of being an Irish writer today would be numerous even were it possible for the English reviews to be less loyal to their country and their class. Liam O'Flaherty has had at least as much to overcome in detaching himself from the settled mist of the "Celtic renaissance" as the writers of that movement had in detaching themselves from the earlier schools of Lever and Boucicault. The unfortunate result is that O'Flaherty has perhaps suffered more than he has gained by the association. It would seem pretty definite that the critical portion of the public is as avid of novelty as the common reader; and both certainly have had reason of late to become rather stalely habituated to the periodic emergence of ambitious talent in Ireland. At any rate an unmistakable tone of weariness has become the custom in whatever is written about this writer in the few literary journals which do not altogether ignore him. Actually, O'Flaherty's relation to the double tradition of Anglo-Irish literature is unique and distinct. He is on the side of Synge and Joyce, as against the side of Swift and Shaw; but he does not belong unreservedly with either of those writers. Neither intellectual refinement nor the impedimenta of culture and religion operate to confuse the complete identification with nature which is the predominant feature of his work. He is closer to the unknown writers of the early Gaelic folk literature than to any of his contemporaries. He is less the product of any modern school than of that period when European culture had not yet entirely lost its innocence.

There can be no question that all the novels of O'Flaherty belong to the category of melodrama; there can be equally little doubt that judgment of their value has been affected by the prevailing distrust of this mode. The objections to the mode have never been clearly formulated, although adherence to it has often been enough to discredit much of the work of Conrad and Dostoievski in the eyes of some critics. In the Greek sense, a melodrama meant simply a play with music; but the term was never used to differentiate such entertainment from a tragedy by Æschylus, for instance, which has nevertheless most of the objectionable features of a modern melodrama. Today we signify by the term any composition in which the element of action seems exaggerated or strained beyond certain vaguely determined limits. What we probably mean is the extension of action beyond the boundaries to which we are accustomed in normal social experience. This restriction may apply with considerable justice to certain works of drama and fiction of inferior merit; but applied to other more pretentious works of the imagination it seems to involve an inconsistency. Perhaps the misconception rests on a failure to determine the nature of the relationship between action and theme, on the failure to recognize that the treatment of certain themes requires the extension of action on a more strenuous and heroic plane than the normal.

Melodrama, so considered, might be accepted as the elaboration of human motives on a grand scale, against immense backgrounds, and to the accompaniment of enormous music. In terms of function, one might discover in this form the most appropriate medium for the working out of certain crises or highly intensified human situations, the proper conditions for which depend on a heightening of the common laws of circumstance. However, any such defense of melodrama as a legitimate mode has nothing to do with its value in comparison with other recognized modes or with any possible system of values of its own. It is possible to write good melodramas, like Macbeth or The Duchess of Malfi; it is also possible to write bad melodramas, like any number of plays written in Shakespeare's time or like any number of books written in our own. It is part of O'Flaherty's distinction as a novelist that he has had the courage, throughout all his five novels, to adopt what is at once the most dangerous and the most unpopular of literary modes.

The fact that all of O'Flaherty's novels, from Thy Neighbour's Wife to The Assassin, adhere to the one mode suggests that it is inevitable for the particular pattern of life that has shaped itself in his imagination. His themes dictate the choice, themes which resolve themselves always into the larger and more violent conflicts of melodrama. Should this explanation prove insufficient, there remains the exceptional nature of the background against which these themes are represented. Modern Ireland is a portion of the earth's surface which it would be necessary to imagine if it did not exist. The Aran Islands, in which O'Flaherty was born, are not unlike those western islands around which Odysseus sailed and adventured; and Dublin, in the civilized modern mind, often takes on the colors of the Elizabethan version of the Italian cities of the Renaissance. It is clear that whatever temperamental predilection O'Flaherty may have had toward the writing of melodrama was strengthened by the inherent conditions of his environment.

For convenience O'Flaherty's work may be divided into those novels and tales which have Dublin, and those which have his native Aran, for their setting. Of the Dublin group, The Informer, The Assassin, and two earlier stories, "The Sniper" and "Civil War," are based on real or imagined circumstances of the period of insurrection and disorder through which that city has passed in the last twelve years. As a whole they constitute the most remarkable record of the period which we are likely to receive: the most complete because derived largely from personal observation and participation; the most reliable because written without any other bias than that of artistic selection.

The Informer, as the title suggests, is a novel of the revolutionary half-world, the story of Gypo Nolan who betrays his friend to the police for twenty pounds. Less than one page is devoted to the actual capture and death of the betrayed man. All the interest is centered on the subsequent psychological history of the informer; his failure to liberate himself from the consciousness of the crime except through the expiation of death affords the theme. To appreciate his state of soul it is always necessary to remember the peculiar ambient of shame and horror that surrounds his crime in Ireland. Although low enough down on the moral scale of society, Gypo Nolan proves himself at bottom hopelessly loyal to the one code of morality that he can understand. How his guilt makes him give himself away at every turn, at every word, every movement, until he is finally shot down on his own doorstep, is told with a profound command of the Judas psychology. TheInformer is a study in conscience; it might even be described as a melodrama of the conscience.

In The Assassin, his last published novel, O'Flaherty essays the most ambitious study of the revolutionist psychology yet attempted in fiction. Here the object of the action, its specific political or social aspects are completely ignored. Also, the whole explicit action is subordinated to the conflict of motives, sometimes clear, sometimes strangely obscure, operating in the mind of the chief conspirator. Every step in Michael McDara's procedure from the moment of his return to Dublin—his selection of confederates, his preparations for the deed, his conduct after the deed—is described in a minute and exciting manner. At the beginning he is presented as the perfect and idealized archetype of the tyrannicide. As such he is thoroughly contrasted with each of his colleagues: Ketch, the professional thug, expert in murder as a trade; Tumulty, a mouthy sentimentalist, an inveterate patriot of the old order. Neither is able to rise to the hard purity of McDara's own philosophy of revolution. "Nobody had the idea," he explains, referring to the past. "Without an idea behind it, every political act becomes immoral and unnecessary. Such an act as this should be done in cold blood, not for motives of revenge or greed or for the purpose of seizing power or for anything else. Merely to cut off the head that is blocking the foreward movement of the mass.… This act must also be directed against the idea of God." In such speeches as this McDara is sustained by his reason and his eloquence; but at other moments he reverts to his peasant origin, remembering his own mother and the creed of his childhood, feeling suddenly terrified at the enormity of the gesture he is making against society. In the finest scene of the book the contrasted mental states of the three conspirators are shown as they sit about in a cheap furnished room on the eve of the murder. Here the closeness of observation is consummate; no movement, no vibration of the tense atmosphere is left unobserved as a possible source of intimate revelation. The style is attuned to the mood of the situation with a precision calculated to make the reader also share in the physical suspense. Ketch lies stretched out on the bed; Tumulty moves about nervously, talking foolishly to conceal his terror; but McDara, at the climax of his dream, ruminates on the sordidness of his surroundings, the cowardice and worthlessness of his companions, the essential waste and futility of his scheme.

If The Informer was a melodrama of the soul, with conscience as the principal protagonist, this last novel of O'Flaherty's is a melodrama of the intellect, founded on the immemorial strife between the will and the memory, between what the mind would determine and what life has decreed. At the end McDara is not strong enough to unbind the cords of tradition and sentiment which chain him to his emotional past, to whose aggregate symbol, on bended knees, he finally succumbs: "Mother, forgive me!" He has been clever enough to make his escape after the assassination quite certain; but the train which hastens him away from Ireland, of whose every beauty he is now made suddenly aware, bears an outcast and a failure. Suicide awaits him as soon as he reaches London.

Mr. Gilhooley represents an interesting effort on the part of O'Flaherty to extend his range of interest into a new sphere of Dublin society, the more quiescent, distinctly more bourgeois, society that is now forming out of the old. Gilhooley is a successful, middle-aged engineer who has come back to Ireland to recover his health after twenty years spent in South America. His is a full-length portrait of l'homme moyen sensuel. The sure sense of a wasted capacity for strong feeling, the depression of autumnal yearning make him ripe for his affair with the girl whom he picks up one night on the pavements. The differences in age and sensibility make the relationship impossible from the beginning. Tragedy becomes certain when Gilhooley's affection burns gradually into the fierce passion of middle-age. Perhaps the meaning of their last terrible scene in the flat, with its resolution of the theme into the familiar nightmare of jealousy and death, can be felt only by recognition of the man's age and essential normalcy. The girl's betrayal is for him the defeat of his life. But about this book as a whole one feels a lessening of strain, especially of poetic strain, as though O'Flaherty were telling Mr. Gilhooley's story more out of duty than out of any profound desire of the imagination.

The stories in Spring Sowing and The Tent should make their appeal even to those readers who are unable to respond to the larger patterns of the novels. The trained intensity of style, the economy of detail, the exact sharpness of perception appear here with special appropriateness and combine to place these stories among the most distinguished of our time. Almost every phase of Irish life is touched on, although for the most part they deal with the land. Such stories as "Milking Time," "Three Lambs" and the title-story of "Spring Sowing" are themselves like the rich exhalations of the soil; "Going into Exile" is a record of its tragedy, "The Bladder" and "The Old Hunter" of its robust humors. Perhaps the most perfect in achievement of all these little stories is "Birth" (published in the limited edition entitled The Fairy Goose), which is the simple account of a group of peasants gathered together near a meadow at night to attend the birth of a calf. But the most individual are those in which O'Flaherty writes about a lost thrust, or the capture of a fish, or a sea gull's first flight—unsentimental studies of animal life written with a fastidious interest usually reserved for human beings alone. From all of O'Flaherty's stories, however, one takes away a similar impression of the profound solidarity of nature, all of her manifestations being of equal importance to the artist who admits her superiority.

This conviction of the impenetrable identity of all physical nature receives its grandest expression in The Black Soul, the second, and the most majestic, of O'Flaherty's novels. "The Black Soul overwhelms one like a storm," wrote AE, but closer is the resemblance to a symphony, a vast prose symphony, whose most proper divisions are the four seasons of the year. The setting is Inverara, "the island of death, the island of defeated peoples, come thither through the ages over the sea pursued by their enemies"; its characters are its people, seated "on the cliffs dreaming of the past of their fathers, dreaming of the sea, the wind, the moon, the stars, the scattered remnants of an army, the remains of a feast eaten by dogs, the shattering of a maniac's ambition." Into this world comes the Stranger, bringing with him the sick body and tired soul of one who has lived too long on the mainland. The whole tempestuous drama of the book is in full process in Fergus O'Connor's brain before it is realized in explicit action. There begins at once his long struggle to yield himself to life as life becomes crystallized for him in his love of Little Mary, the wife of the peasant with whom he has taken lodging. Mary is a kind of island Cybele; she has no more character, in the usual sense, than nature herself; she is as hard, as wild and as beautiful. But Fergus is obliged to bore down through every layer of sentiment, culture, illusion which buries the reality of his being. The old conflict between nature and the intellect—the single underlying theme of all O'Flaherty's novels—here is staged against the most opulent background of physical nature, elaborated with all the resources of a rich, poetic prose, and resolved finally in one of the most powerful scenes in modern fiction. During the fierce struggle with Red John in the cleft of rocks on the coast, Fergus is made to see the meaning of life through the meaning of death. Through action he is at last able to free himself. It would be much closer to a certain tradition of romantic fiction to have Fergus, instead of Red John, meet his end in this scene. But such a solution would cause the deeper implication of the novel to be lost. The victory of Fergus is essential if the positive import of the theme is to be established: the complete reaffirmation of physical experience as the means of bringing man back into harmony with his universe.

The Black Soul is the best of O'Flaherty's novels because of the grandeur and sonority of the theme and because of the abundance of those qualities of language and perception for which his work as a whole is distinguished. These qualities are essentially of a poetic order and, as such, difficult to define or describe by means of any available critical equivalents, although plainly manifest on every page. Moreover, they are qualities which should make a potent appeal to any modern reader. (The theme of The Black Soul, for example, is profoundly modern, but it is also more than modern.) Nature, not as the dark intoxicant of the earlier romanticists, but as something apprehended in the flesh, may come to be more and more accepted by our writers as the superstructure of our intellectual world crumbles about their feet. In the meantime, when most of our novelists seem to be frantically entrapped among the ruins, the reading of O'Flaherty is like a tonic and a promise.

Source: William Troy, "The Position of Liam O'Flaherty," in Bookman, Vol. 69, March 1929, pp. 7–11.

Sources

Calahan, James M., "Politics," in Liam O'Flaherty, A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers, 1991, pp. 30–40.

Doyle, Paul A., "Liam O'Flaherty," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 162, British Short Fiction Writers, 1915–1945, edited by John H. Rogers, Gale Research, 1996, pp. 282–92.

Kelly, A. A., "Urban and War Themes," in Liam O'Flaherty: The Storytellers, Harper & Row Publishers, 1976, pp. 23–36.

O'Brien, James H., "The Short Stories," in Liam O'Flaherty, Associated University Presses, 1973, pp. 92–117.

Troy, William, "The Position of Liam O'Flaherty," in Bookman, Vol. LXIX, March 29, 1929, pp. 7–11.