Dehumanizing nature of war
The basic theme of this short story is war. The story by O'Flaherty was published in January 1923, during the Irish civil war. The story too is set in the same period and revolves around the same war. In this story, O'Flaherty speaks of the cruelty and violence that war propagates, and how it has the power to dehumanize men. He says of the Sniper, "his eyes had the cold gleam, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death." As seen in the story, he has no qualms about killing anybody whom he considers as 'enemy', even if the enemy turns out to be a frightened old woman. Yet, the Sniper is not inherently a man used to death or war or killing, as his obvious disgust with it could be seen, when he becomes bitten by remorse on seeing the enemy soldier die and fall off the opposite roof. But he again comes back to his hardened desensitized senses, and laughs when a bullet from his own revolver whizzes past his head.
Concept of civil war
The Sniper is a short story about the Irish Civil War, an event and a concept that is greeted with critical protest. In this story, the nation is compared to a family, where brothers are seen to be killing each other, instead of coming to a peaceful resolution. A civil war is essential a war inside a nation, between countrymen having a shared history and a common past. O'Flaherty tries to convey to his readers of that time; which was during the civil war; that they were essentially fighting against and blindly murdering their own brothers, like the Republican Sniper who couldn't even recognize his brother from across the street.
