Liam O'Flaherty

1. Liam O'Flaherty Insight On Works

2. Books by Liam O'Flaherty • Famine • The Informer • The Sniper • Skerrett • Insurrection • The Black Soul • Assassin • ETC…. More than 25 books in English

3. Type of Writer • Readers think of O’Flaherty less as an interpreter of a phase of Irish life and more of a student of violence and a writer of thrillers. • His most notable characters have been people motivated by strong drives and hampered by limited intelligence. This includes sadists, informers, revolutionaries and many kinds of fanatics. • “His interest in people who are somewhat less than human quite logically led him to animals, and he has developed a genre which may not be original but which he has made all his own--the short story with animal characters, a new bestiary.”- David H. Greene • In the ten books that appear in the present collection: • A young seagull learns to fly • A cow leaps madly off a cliff when she sees the carcass of her still-born calf being washed out to sea • A wounded cormorant is destroyed by his own mates • A wild goat fights a dog to the death to protect her kid • A hawk and his mate throw themselves at a man climbing down the face of a cliff after their eggs.

4. Type of Writer Continued • Greene says “He likes this type of writing, because he doesn’t have to deal with personality and because this is a way of writing about problems of loyalty and survival which, in O'Flaherty's view, differ little from those in human relationships.” • While most of his writings are about thrillers and animal like behaviors, he does a good job describing different scenes. • In “The Sniper”, he describes the soldier of the man but also the human in him too. • In “The Mirror”, he goes in detail to describe sunlight on silken moss, the seaweed at one moment stretched out "like a red flounce on the ocean's green skirt" and at another part "drawn down again by each recess and left naked against the black belly of the rock“ • “It is a kind of poetic intensity one does not find in the most distinguished of O'Flaherty's earlier work. It's a delight to see one of the masters successfully turning an old hand to new tricks.”- Greene

5. The Sniper BACK GROUND INFO • O’Flaherty fought for the Republicans at the famous Four Courts rebellion. • at the time of the story's writing and publication, the civil war was still going on • 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. • However, 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 gives him a greater symbolic meaning. • The sniper comes to represent all soldiers, both Republican and Free Starters. • - Rena Korb

6. The Sniper Continued • O'Flaherty does not describe the 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 creates the men as mirror images. Both men have positioned themselves on opposing rooftops, thus reinforcing the idea of similarity.

7. The Sniper Continued • 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.”- Rena Korb

8. Conclusion • Most of Liam O'Flaherty’s works do a good job of describing scenes that show the characteristics of people on a deeper level. • He doesn’t go in depth about the issues at hand as not to offend people and to protect his back in a time of war. • Last of all, readers may think of him more as a violence and thriller writer, but he actually does a good job of interpreting phases of Irish life, and most of his works are centered around this.

9. Work Cited • Greene, David H. "New Heights (review of The Stories of Liam O'Flaherty)." Commonweal 64.13 (29 June 1956): 328. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Vol. 116. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. • Korb, Rena. "Critical Essay on 'The Sniper'." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.