Problem of the story

"The Sniper," a short story by Irish author Liam O'Flaherty, was first published in 1923. The story is set early in the Irish Civil War, a conflict that arose with Britain's establishment of the Irish Free State. In "The Sniper," an unnamed sniper fighting on the Republican side faces the task of shooting a sniper on the Free Stater side. The action of this brief story consists of the sniper attempting to get a clear shot at his opponent, getting shot himself, and then creating a ruse so that he can successfully kill the other sniper. At the conclusion of the story, the sniper realizes that he has just shot his own brother; this revelation brings home to the reader the cruelty of war and the ways in which war can reach far beyond the battlefield.