...War Has No Boundaries The short story “The Sniper” was written by Liam O’Flaherty. The Sniper was published on January 12, 1923. Liam O’Flaherty was born on August 28, 1898. Liam grew up in a poverty-stricken village on Irishmore Island in County Galway on the western coast of Ireland (Cummings,2007). O’Flaherty joined the British Army during the First World War in 1915. He wrote the sniper on his findings during the Irish Civil War. The main ideas that Liam was trying to represent are war has no boundaries, that war reduces humans into mere objects, and individualism. The Irish Civil War began on June 28, 1922 and ended May 24, 1923. The war claimed more lives than the war of independence did. The conflict broke out between two opposing sides: The Free State, and Republican Opposition. The Anglo-Irish Treaty arose from the Irish War of Independence. The treaty provided for a self-governing Irish state in twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties. The Free State supported the treaty while the treaty represented the republican side. The split between the two opposing sides was very personal. The leaders on the opposing side were very close friends, and were comrades during the Irish War of Independence. The leader of the republican was...
Words: 1396 - Pages: 6
...slaves where brought to the North American in 1619. There has been slavery throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1861 a political and military war between the Northern and Southern states began because they had different views of the human rights and the southern states still used blacks as slaves in some areas. This war was called the Civil War. The short story “The Whipping Boy” is about the three slaves Martha, Mikey, and, Tommy, who have lived as slaves during the Civil War. It’s a short story about slavery, freedom and their revenge on Sterling Gage who has tortured the three slaves throughout their lives. The short story is published in 2011 and is written by the author Richard Gibney. The short story shows how harsh and brutal it was to be a slave and how they fight to achieve freedom. It also shows how revengeful the slaves were because they were treated very badly throughout their lives. The short story takes place in the United States in the end of the American Civil War. “It was the day after the boy from the Union had come to the farm to let the slaves know they were freemen” (Page 1 lines 1-2). This is the first quotation in the short story and it already tells us that it takes place in America in the Southern states. The key word “the Union” says that the story takes place in the Southern states because the Union is in the North and the boy came from the Union. The slaves in the Northern states were already free at this moment and...
Words: 1187 - Pages: 5
...prospects better so that their stories are more plausible and readable even though they are fictional. Frank O'Connor is a writer who did this. “Guests of the Nation” is definitely a story based on his own experience. Frank O'Connor puts his personal thoughts and experiences to arrange the characters in order to talks about the relationship between personal duty and humanity during the war, which also implies the relationship between political conflicts and the hope of peaceful life for humans. Though out history, at the beginning Ireland was a British colony, the economic depressed and had a time of hardship. By 1900, the Irish Civil War loomed. In the summer of 1913, Dublin workers went on strike for 5 months, indicating that the proletariat had become the Irish independent political force. During World War I in 1914, the Irish national fighting moved to further. Easter Rising broke out in April 1916. In 1919, the Sinn Fein refused to attend the British Parliament, but held their own in the Dublin parliament and the creation of army. In 1921, the Irish Civil War occurred; the Irish people started fighting for national independence, autonomy for land rights, and the struggle to recover. The Republic of Ireland was established (Lambert). O'Connor's background change strongly related to the history of the Irish Civil War. He experienced a difficult childhood. On the main page of New World Encyclopedia states that “In 1918, he joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican...
Words: 1229 - Pages: 5
...the horrible memories from the Irish Civil War still lingering in the grass on the field? What does the tears of the grandfather symbolize? “Field of Tears” is a short story written by Declan J. Connaughton in which he tells the story about an old man and his granddaughter called Rita. She frequently comes to visit him at the nursing home where he has to stay against her will, simply because he is too old and weak. She knows this and it’s also one of the reasons why she goes to see him that often, to spend time with him before it’s too late which makes every second she has with him precious. Rita wants to take him out for a drive and the grandfather guides her to a field he remembers from when he was stationed during the Civil War. As he sits in the car facing the sea, he starts to recall a memory from the field and suddenly Rita isn’t there anymore but his comrades from the war are. “Field of Tears” is a historical fiction short story that follows a man who took part in the Irish Civil War which followed the Irish War of Independence, where the Irish people fought for the right to be an Irish Republic. England wouldn’t let them have their will but they made a treaty that ended the British rule in most of Ireland. This wasn’t satisfying enough for some of the Irish republicans that didn’t want to take part in the “Provisional Government”, who supported the treaty and this lead to a civil war between these two opposing groups. The story gives us a glimpse of the guilt that...
Words: 1125 - Pages: 5
...My nomination for best short story will be “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The reason I selected this is my interest in the Civil War era. This short story is intriguing by the use of changing the chronological order to hold the reader’s attention. The story is broken into five sections and each section has the reader wondering what Ms. Emily Grierson has done. The use of Homer Barron schemes the reader into believing that the two had fallen in love with each other, even though in the end, Homer was poisoned by Emily. The setting of the short story is the historical Mississippi southern town after the civil war. Emily is the protagonist of the story, while Homer is the antagonist. Homer is a northerner or outsider and is seen in the town as someone trying to take over the town. The third element is the point of view, which is the ghostly view of the narrator of the story (Klien, 2007). The use of the characters, historical setting and point of view provide the reader interest of what the plot will...
Words: 998 - Pages: 4
... does as the others describe the historic brutality, but it also takes a different view that gives a curious reason for the oncoming racism, in the period. “The Whipping Boy” as many other stories, told during and after the American civil war, takes place in the Confederate States most likely in the South East, where plantations were abundant. The civil war has just ended as a messenger boy from the Union has told the former slaves of their freedom, alas the year is 1865. Our third person narrator, Martha, does not really believe the messenger, as she believes him “too young and underqualified to confer freedom upon anyone…”, though the two brothers Mikey and Tommy believe in the Union boy’s story, whereas their first act as free men is to kill the dogs of their former slaver/master Sterling Gage. This, at first, seems quite brutal, but we quickly learn that “… the slaves treated the dogs better in death than the dogs had treated the slaves in life.” Which leaves the mind open to imagine different cruelties exacted upon Mikey and Tommy by using the dogs. Further on we learn more about their relationship with Gage and his family; Martha was forced to sleep with him and Gage had beaten Mikey for “ogling” Martha. Though, at first Mikey had seen Gage as a friend, he tells Martha of Gage’s betrayal of him, when Gage blamed him for stealing sugar, which Gage had done himself. This...
Words: 1012 - Pages: 5
...made us laugh as much, Charlie Chaplin moved us more deeply, but no one had more courage than Buster. I define courage as Hemingway did: "Grace under pressure." In films that combined comedy with extraordinary physical risks, Buster Keaton played a brave spirit who took the universe on its own terms, and gave no quarter. I'm immersed in his career right now, viewing all of the silent features and many of the shorts with students at the University of Chicago. Having already written about Keaton's "The General" (1927) in this series, I thought to choose another title. "The Navigator," perhaps, or "Steamboat Bill, Jr.," or "Our Hospitality." But they are all of a piece; in an extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies. Most of these movies were long thought to be lost. "The General," with Buster as a train engineer in the Civil War, was always available, hailed as one of the supreme masterpieces of silent filmmaking. But other features and shorts existed in shabby, incomplete prints, if at all, and it was only in the 1960s that film historians began to assemble and restore Keaton's lifework. Now almost everything has been recovered, restored, and is available on DVDs and tapes that range from watchable to sparkling. It's said that Chaplin wanted you to like him, but Keaton didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask. His films avoid the pathos...
Words: 6535 - Pages: 27
...Alvaro Barsallo Ms. Morrow ENC1102 9/28/2014 A Look at “A Rose for Emily” “A Rose for Emily” is a short story by William Faulkner. It is the story of an old southern woman called Emily who lives only with her servant in an old mansion after her father dies; she never goes out and is rarely seen by the townspeople. Nobody in the town knows that she’s keeping a macabre secret inside her room. I chose this story in particular because I’m a huge fan of The Zombies and music from the sixties in general. In The Zombies’ album Odessey and Oracle, there is a short retelling of the story and that is the only version of the story I have ever heard before reading the actual story in class recently. The story is divided in five parts. In the first part of the story, the narrator recalls the time of Emily’s death and how the whole town attends her funeral in her old dilapidated home. We are told how the previous mayor, a man in his eighties, has retracted Emily’s taxes after her father’s death. When the new younger generation town leaders take over they try to make her pay taxes but she gets her way and successfully gets rid of these officials. In the second part, the narrator describes how thirty years earlier, Emily’s house started to smell horrible. The younger officials sprinkle lime along the foundation to appease the townspeople who are complaining of the odor. The narrator gives us a clue about Emily’s state of mind by telling us the Emily’s great aunt had succumbed to mental...
Words: 1120 - Pages: 5
...John Adams once said, “Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.” This means that killing in war is most felt when it could have been avoided. Justification for killing in war is a very debated topic. Some deem it as necessary for freedom, but what is necessary about killing another human being? Liam O’Flaherty was a short story writer from the early to mid-1900s. The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2015) disclose that his various novels and short stories guided the course for other authors in the literary Irish Renaissance. In his story, “The Sniper,” O’Flaherty stresses the importance of the human feeling soldiers obtain when amidts battle. “The Sniper” takes place in Dublin, Ireland in the middle of a heated Irish civil war between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Free Staters. An IRA sniper has been...
Words: 883 - Pages: 4
...Name: Tram Dang Level: 112 Civil War: Brother vs. Brother How do people feel when they fight with their brothers or their family members? How do they feel when they hurt or lose any part of their body? Do they feel good? Those are exactly the things that the sniper in Liam O’Flaherty’s story has to suffer. Liam O’Flaherty was a great Irish novelist and short story writer. In his story “The Sniper”, which is about the civil war between Republican and Free Starters in Ireland, the main character has to shoot and gets shot by another sniper who is actually his own brother. By telling this story, O’Flaherty wants to show everybody the huge destruction of wars, especially civil wars. The first part of war destruction is the human mental state. In the war, human feelings are not stable. They change into different moods every second from happy to sad, from eager to angry, from callous to sensitive. The obvious reason for this is killing or being killed, shooting or getting shot. The sniper doesn’t have any choice, but to fight for his life. “[H]is 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” (par.2). Although he is described as an experienced killer, which means that he has observed death many times before, his mental state still changes differently and unpredictably after killing his enemy. “The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead […]...
Words: 813 - Pages: 4
...The Whipping Boy By Richard Gibney In the late 1800 a violent and comprehensive civil war began in the United States of America after Abraham Lincoln supported banning slavery. The war was a conflict between the Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South, Non-slavery against slavery. One of the most significant events in the history of the United States. The North was fighting to end slavery and protect the Union. Richard Gibney addresses the controversial subject slavery in his short story ”The Whipping Boy” that takes place in the end of the American Civil War where slavery was abolished. ”The Whipping Boy” starts in medias res in a slave plantation in the southern part of America around the late 1800 (1864-1865). The reader is introduced to three slaves: Martha, Mikey and Tommy. They work and live at a plantation owned by their masters: Old Mrs. Gage, who is very sick and cries bitter tears over her husband’s death and the young First Lieutenant in the Confederate army, Sterling Gage, who has been in battle at the front for a year. The plot takes off when the three slaves are informed that slavery has been abolished: ”It was the day after the boy from the Union had come to the farm to let the slaves know they were freemen”. The action rises as the slaves are declared freemen and decide to travel to the north and get jobs. ”Then they could all go North, Mikey, his new wife and his brother, all working for wages in the city.” They had stopped working in the...
Words: 1280 - Pages: 6
..."Everyday Use" is a short story by Alice Walker. It was first published in 1973 as part of Walker's short story collection, In Love and Trouble. The story is told in first person by the "Mama", an African American woman living in the Deep South with one of her two daughters. The story humorously illustrates the differences between Mrs. Johnson and her shy younger daughter Maggie, who still live traditionally in the rural South, and her educated, successful daughter Dee,or "Wangero" as she prefers to be called, who scorns her immediate roots in favor of a pretentious "native African" identity. The story centers around one day when the older daughter, Dee, visits from college after time away and a conflict between them over some heirloom family possessions. The struggle reflects the characters' contrasting ideas about their heritage and identity. Throughout the story. Dee goes back and forth on being proud and rejecting her heritage. For example, when she decides at dinner that she wants the butter dish, she shows that she respects her heritage because she knows that her uncle carved that with from a tree they used to have. However, she wants it for the wrong reason, saying that she will use it only for decoration. Another example is when she wants the quilts that Mama has. She states that she wants them because of the generations of clothing and effort put into making...
Words: 442 - Pages: 2
...Eassay – The Whipping Boy The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world. The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the Deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The American writer Richard Gibney later used this as a theme in his novel “The Whipping Boy”, where he gives us a portrait of the differences between what the written law said and what actually happened. In the short story, foreshadowing is one of the things you will read. P. 1, l. 6: “In destroying the beasts as they slept, the slaves treated the dogs better in death than the dogs had treated the slaves in...
Words: 803 - Pages: 4
...defeat ... a man can be destroyed but not defeated”, Ernest Hemiway, was suicide by his shotgun. For sixty-two years, being a great journalist, a soldier and a great writer, Hemingway sang the praise of courageous and extoled human values through his visual experience of the Great War. A Farewell to Arms (1929) – The World War I experience For Whom the Bells Toll (1940) – The Spanish Civil War The Oldman and the Sea (1952) – Ernest Hemingway’s war. (Life’s struggle) This paper will focus on three different wars in Ernest Hemingway’s time frame by concentrate his life style and its influence on writing emotion through his way to the Nobel Prize. Body I. Early Life A. Birth Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in the family which father is the doctor and mother is a former opera singer. During his childhood, he loved sports, hunting and fishing at the family’s summer house at Walloon Lake, Michigan. He was a talented writer, even when he was teenager, he always kept note fill with his thought and observation about the world around him. Hemingway fear his mother. As Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s third wife wrote “Deep in Ernest, due to his mother, going back to the indestructible first memories of childhood, was mistrust and fear of women” (http://www.salon.com/2006/08/12/gellhorn.html) B. Family His father, Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a doctor, and his mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, a former opera performer, lived in Oak Park, Illinois. He is a second child...
Words: 1507 - Pages: 7
...Presentation of the Protagonist in ‘Veronica’ and ‘The Necklace’ The protagonists in the two stories ‘Veronica’ and ‘The Necklace’ have some similarities, but mostly are the two women in the stories are very different. Just by looking at the title, we get two very different impressions. In ‘Veronica’ the protagonist is Veronica heraself. Veronica is presented as being a very good person, a person that is committed to her family. This is normal from the Nigerian Village and the environment she is from. The woman stay homes to take care of the children, while the men go to the city to work, like Okeke. We get the impression that her family is the lowest in the community. We hear Veronica lives in Nigeria around the 1970s, which is the same time as the Civil War, and the author have focused a lot on this. The author makes the reader feel sympathy for Veronica, because she is in the situation she is. Her family is very poor, she has to take care of the family from a very young age. We hear later in the story, that she is lucky getting a man which have a job, so he can get some money to the family. Guy de Maupasssant is presenting the protagonist in “The Necklace” very differently. She is very representative of her society. She is being presented as being very selfish, egocentric and ungrateful. The reader is barely getting any kind of sympathy for her at the beginning of the story. Because of her negative vision on life she only wants the best, of the best. So compared to Veronica...
Words: 1234 - Pages: 5
