as an experienced, skillful marksman.

Once the sniper is shot in his forearm, he demonstrates his tough, fearless personality by gritting his teeth, cleaning the wound, and bandaging the area. The sniper also proves that he is skillful, intelligent, and inventive by creating a successful ruse, which fools the enemy sniper and gives him the opportunity to take a clean shot. After the sniper kills his enemy, O'Flaherty writes,

"The lust of battle died in him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out in beads on his forehead. Weakened by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered, he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody."

The sniper's response depicts him as a remorseful, guilt-ridden young man, who is sick of violence and destruction. War has traumatized the sniper, who struggles to accept the duality of his human nature. Although the Republican sniper is a compassionate human, he is also a heartless killing machine at times. The war has forced the sniper to remain callous, insensitive, and violent to survive. The sniper has suppressed his humanity, which comes to the surface after killing his enemy, which turns out to be his brother.

The sniper is depicted as having the face of a student, who is thin, ascetic, and has a gleam in his eyes that suggests he is a fanatic. Although he is a young man, his eyes are also deep and thoughtful as if he is used to looking at death. Throughout the course of the short story, the sniper demonstrates his expert marksmanship skills by killing an enemy in the turret of an armored car and an old woman acting as an informant.

After being shot in the forearm by an enemy sniper, the protagonist sniper demonstrates his toughness and focus by wrapping his painful wound and formulating a plan to avoid the enemy sniper stationed on the opposite rooftop. The sniper's rouse reveals that he is resourceful, intuitive, and creative. The young sniper's reaction following his successful kill implies that he is stressed out and completely exhausted from fighting. The fact that he throws his loaded weapon against the ground and gibbers to himself reveals that he is a sensitive, rather reckless individual who is dramatically affected by the constant death surrounding him. His motivation to look into the face of the enemy sniper at the end of the story also reveals that he is a curious, inquisitive young man.

In Liam O'Flaherty's "The Sniper," an Irish Republican sniper lies on a rooftop in Dublin, watching his surroundings for signs of enemy movement. He knows that enemies are watching for a sign of him too, and lighting his cigarette gives away his location. When someone fires on him, he sees where the flash comes from and knows that an enemy sniper is on the rooftop opposite his own, also undercover. Both snipers, then, are on high alert, tasked with killing any enemy soldiers they see. In addition, they are obviously both passionate supporters of their causes because they are willing to risk their lives in this endeavor. When the protagonist shoots at some enemies in the street—a female informant and a man in a tank—his counterpart shoots him, wounding him in the arm. We learn, here, that both snipers are skilled shooters; both are accurate even at a great distance, in the near darkness, and under extreme duress. Both snipers are patient as well. The protagonist waits, nurses his wounded arm, and makes a plan for how to trick the other sniper into thinking that he has been killed. The other sniper also waits, biding his time until he can make a move that will not endanger himself. In the end, when the protagonist sniper goes to look at the face of the man he has killed, we learn that both snipers are also members of the same family: brothers, in fact.

Most of the characterization done in this great short story is done indirectly. Readers are told some basics about what the sniper's face looks like in the beginning of the story.

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 quote also seems to indicate that the sniper is an experienced killer; however, beyond those details, we are directly told little else. Readers are likely to figure out that the sniper is a creative thinker as well as somebody that can stay cool, calm, and collected during frantic, tense, and life threatening moments. We see this when the sniper refuses to panic despite his situation getting worse and worse. He is first spotted, then he is wounded, and finally he loses his main weapon. Despite all of those things putting him at a disadvantage, the sniper figures out a solution to his problem that allows him to kill his enemy with the remaining tools that he has on hand.

He is calm and patient.  The author makes this obvious by the sniper's ability to wait on his opponent and to remain almost motionless for a long period of time.

For most of the short story, the sniper appears to be detached and emotionless, but the ending causes the reader to question how such a collect character would proceed after discovering that he had killed his own brother.

The sniper is also a little bit of an Alpha male in that he seems to have extreme confidence in himself and "knows" that he will have victory over his opponent.

Liam O'Flaherty's sniper, from the short story "The Sniper", is both calculating and remorseful.

In the beginning, the sniper desires nothing more than to take out the sniper on the other rooftop. The quote "He must kill that enemy" shows his admittance towards his desire to do what ever needs to be done to dispose of the threat. He devises a plan to lure the other sniper out into the open so as to be able to find a certain kill shot.

The sniper, in the end, changes dramatically. Instead of his desire laying in the kill, his desire suddenly changes. After he makes the kill, the sniper is "became bitten by remorse." His whole attitude about the job, his job, at hand (given now completed) has forced him to rethink his position. He is no longer filled with the desire to kill. Instead, "the lust of battle died in him."