Review of the story "Sniper"

War detaches people from everything and everyone they know, and it can alter someone’s emotions to the point that the only battle they end up fighting is against themselves. This is portrayed in the story “The Sniper” showing a sniper whose feelings and emotions are turned off precisely because he is used to looking at death, but then, when he actually feels something, is when he realizes what the war has done to him. A principal theme in the story “The Sniper” is that war can put people at war with their own emotions.

In the beginning of the story, the sniper is so used to killing that he is numb to the idea of taking someone else’s life. This can be seen when the author describes the way the sniper looks at war itself. He says, “His face was the face of a student, thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to looking at death.” This tells us that the sniper is unperturbed by war and killing, after having gotten used to seeing it. Another example of when the sniper’s apathy can be seen is when he doesn’t think twice about wanting to kill the enemy sniper. “He must kill that enemy and he could not use his rifle. He had only a revolver to do it.” When this is happening, the sniper shows determination to kill that person no matter what he has to do, and there are no emotions stopping him from doing it. In the story, the sniper became indifferent to killing others and at times, it even was his priority.

When the sniper killed his enemy, his emotions changed and feelings of remorse took over him, making him even more mentally unstable. The author first portrays this when he describes the sniper’s reaction to killing the enemy. “The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse.” This shows a sudden change of emotions, because not only was he numb and careless before, but he also had a desire to fight, and after finally killing the other sniper he feels guilt and remorse, enough to make him more vulnerable. Additionally, the actions that come afterwards show what the sniper went through during this change of emotions. “His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.” This quote shows how the sniper suddenly feels differently about the war and about death; killing that man had made him weak, and that vulnerability makes him much more mentally unstable. The sniper’s emotions take an unexpected turn when he realizes he actually took the enemy sniper’s life; all those emotions that come crashing down on him make him weaker and more unstable than he was before.

The sniper lost physical and emotional contact so much with the world outside the war, that he kills his own brother without even realizing it. This is made apparent when he wonders who the enemy he killed is, and decides to find out. “When the sniper reached the laneway on the street level, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He decided that he was a good shot, whoever he was. He wondered did he know him. Perhaps he had been in his own company before the split in the army.” The fact that he is aware that the man he killed might have previously belonged to his company proves that there was a distance that kept growing between him and the rest of the world because of the war. As illustrated by the author towards the end of the story, the sniper actually walks up to the body of the enemy sniper to find out who he is, only to find something he certainly was not expecting. “Then, the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother’s face.” As shocking as this last sentence may be, it definitely shows how the war isolated the sniper from everything, from feelings to his own brother. The sniper’s detachment from the outside world and any emotional contact with it shows

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