The narrative was clearly set up to create a specific emotional impact on the reader and for that impact to carry a specific message.
One meaning we can establish as being true to the author's intent is that in war the participants tend to dehumanize themselves and others. This is evident throughout the story, such as by no one having a name and by the sniper concerning himself entirely with his own survival and actions, never pausing to reflect.
This dehumanization is a double-edged sword: dehumanization allows mentally and morally damaging actions to be undertaken with less strain on the person's sanity, but it also permits great injustices and transgressions to take place in the name of a "greater good," namely the victory of their side as well as one's own survival. This is the opposite of every type of social welfare cultivated in peacetime.
What is the meaning of the story "The Sniper"?
"The Sniper " is...
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about a young man fighting in the Irish Civil War. The story illustrates how a young, impressionable person can become used to the atrocities of war. However, after the sniper is able to kill the enemy sniper, he suddenly becomes human again and is filled with remorse.
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.
In his disgust, the sniper throws his revolver and it goes off, scaring him back into a more focused, soldier's mentality. Seeing that the coast was clear, the sniper decides to get a look at his enemy, thinking he might know him, maybe before the army split into Republicans and Free Staters. The final line can be read literally or metaphorically:
Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face.
Given that this was a civil war, he could have been looking into his actual brother's face. Or, brother could mean fellow Irishman; therefore, he was looking into the face of a fellow countryman. (The American Civil War was often called a battle of "brother against brother.") In any case, this shows, regardless of the reasons for war, how senseless war can be. A civil war is more prone to be personal because a soldier might know, or even be related to, some of his enemies. But even in an international war, we could say that a man shooting another man is shooting his brother since we are all human and related in our desire to live peacefully.