Student Question
After the Irish War of Independence, the Anglo-Irish treaty gave 26 of the 32 Irish counties the right to form a free state. The 6 northern counties seceded from the Free State. The British also maintained ports along the Irish coast in Cobh, Bearhaven and Lough Swilly. Some of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) independence fighters were not at all happy with the provisions of the treaty. The Irish Civil War was a result of this dissatisfaction; disgruntled IRA soldiers fought Free-Staters for pre-eminence in further negotiations with the British.
In the story, the sniper first spies the old woman when she speaks to the machine gunner in the armored car. It turns out that she is an informer; as she points in his direction, the sniper realizes that she is giving his position away. He shoots the gunner and then the old woman. The old woman sets up a...
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conflict for the sniper because she is Irish as well; in the Irish Civil War, Irishmen fought each other, informed on each other, and suffered the miseries of prolonged warfare as a people. The miserable conditions of war brought death and poverty on the people. The author describes the old woman's tattered shawl, a symbol of her poverty.
Because of the civil war, the sniper has no choice but to shoot an old woman he would otherwise have treated as his own grandmother in better days. This conflict between loyalty and self-preservation presented many agonizing choices for those who fought.
The old woman causes a conflict for the sniper because she is an informant who gives away his location to the man in the armored car. She points up to the rooftop where the sniper is hiding, and the man in the car looks up to where she is pointing, so it is clear that the sniper cannot let them live. If he does, then someone in the armored car could come to kill him, and the woman could tell others where he is located if the first person is unsuccessful.
However, there is an enemy sniper on the rooftop opposite the protagonist's. If the protagonist raises up to kill the man in the armored car and the old woman—who present one danger to him—he will render himself visible to the enemy sniper. This enemy has already taken shots at him and only very narrowly missed, and so it seems likely that the protagonist will be shot if he takes the time to aim at the man in the armored car and the old woman. On the other hand, he cannot allow them to live, because they, too, threaten his safety. It's kind of a lose-lose situation for the protagonist, and he is, in fact, shot by the enemy sniper when he shoots the man and the old woman.