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Irony runs the engine of life, sending it twisting and turning in odd directions just often enough to show humans just how ridiculous life can be. In the short story “The Sniper,” by Liam O’Flaherty, this irony is employed as a young soldier plays out his duty as a hit man in 1920’s Dublin during the Irish civil war. Although O’Flaherty uses war as a theme in the story, the running theme in “The Sniper” is the basic irony of the war. Civil wars are generally infamous for putting brother against brother, or religion against religion, as was the case in Ireland for more than 80 years. The idea of Protestants and Catholics fighting against each other for any reason is simply paradoxical, especially when each claim that they are running on the fundamental Christian concept of “love thy neighbor.” During this war more Irishmen would die by compatriot hand than by their British enemies in the War of Liberation some four years earlier. However, the war was merely the setting of the stage that would send the actors into a far more warped dance. Liam O