Genre
The Sniper: Short story/Irish fiction
Setting and Context
The Sniper: Dublin, Ireland at twilight on a night in June on rooftop near O’Connel Bridge during a time of increased tension in the ongoing civil war between Irish Republicans and British loyalists.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person limited perspective from the point of view of the Republican sniper with occasional penetrations into his thoughts and feelings.
Tone and Mood
The Alien Skull: a quite atypical story by the author featuring a tone and mood unusually nihilistic with an absence of all hope and optimism for mankind.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Two Dogs: Protagonist: Collaboration when working toward a common goal. Antagonist: Competition when working together a common goal.
Major Conflict
The Wave: The conflict is this story is one that has been going on for an epochal period of time. It is a portrait of an evolutionary moment in the long history of erosion caused by the forces of ocean waves ceaselessly pounding away at a rocky cliff.
Climax
The Wave: that evolutionary turning point is the moment when the liquid finally wins out against rock and the cliff collapses.
Foreshadowing
The Wave: Very early in the story, the narrator observes that “the sea had eaten up the part of the cliff that rested on that semicircle of flat rock, during thousands of years of battle” which foreshadows the disappearance of the cliff in the story’s final paragraph.
Understatement
The Sniper: the horrific irony of the ending of is presented as extreme understatement of the full dimensionality of the sniper’s success at his duty. “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and look into his brother’s face.”
Allusions
N/A
Imagery
Throughout the author’s body of work, the natural world and non-human creatures interacting within it are presented through imagery as elements of order whereas imagery serves to present the world of humanity as chaotic and destructive.
Paradox
n/a
Parallelism
O’Flaherty’s body of work is a catalog of parallels drawn between animal behavior and that of man. “Two Dogs” uses the competition between two rabbit-hunting dogs as commentary upon the destructive forces of competition among men to cite just one of many examples.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
Wolf Lanigan’s Death: reference to the title character throughout the story as “The Wolf” is an example of synecdoche.
Personification
His First Flight: this story of a young seagull’s fear of flying and the tough love applied by his parents to coerce him into overcoming his fear is constructed entirely on a foundation of attributing human characteristics to the seagulls.
