Responsibility in “The Sniper” by Liam O’ Flaherty and “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Responsibility is seen in two famous writings “The Sniper” by Liam O’ Flaherty and “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell. The Sniper is a short story about a man who is being held down by enemy gunfire during the war in Ireland. He was left with only one choice to escape with his life. After he kills the man, we go to rendezvous with his team and curiosity got the best of him and he went to see who he killed and it turned out to be his very own brother. Shooting an Elephant is about a British police officer in Africa and the community does not like him. A mad elephant killed livestock as well as a man. This required the officer to do something about it. He went to go check on the elephant but the whole town came with so he felt obligated to shoot the elephant. The stories both hold deep meanings about doing what must be done that must be interpreted by the reader.

The roles in the sniper and the shooter are very similar. The policeman in shooting an elephant was given his responsibility and he was required to do it by the community. The sniper on the other hand is also given responsibility and it is to fight for his country. Both of these stories contain threats to their community so they must take care of them. The sniper was held down by enemy fire his only escape was to kill the person holding him down. These characters are very similar in they must do the duty that they are responsible for; they are different as well. One man is killing another man while one is killing an elephant. These both have their downfall part of it as the man the sniper killed turned out to be his brother. The policeman was not respected in his town so he needed to do something to prove to these citizens, his intentions were not to shoot the elephant but the whole town came out and watched so he was left with no choice after he had shot the elephant it did not die right away it took a half-hour for the elephant to die this means the elephant died a slow and painful death. This makes you wonder did the slow and painful death mess with the policeman’s head the same way it did with the sniper killing his brother. Any war that has ever happened is humans killing humans almost like in games, wars almost take the human out of your enemy and turn them into some crazy monster or maybe even an animal.

The themes of each of these short stories can go many ways. They both have similar themes, the sniper’s theme is about how the cruel war makes you forget you are fighting other humans, this leads right into the theme of shooting an elephant. A cruel death relates directly to the cruelness of the war. It takes the elephant half an hour to die, that is a slow and painful death that no one wishes upon anyone. The war is being fought and their jobs are just to do what they are told by their commanders, this takes out all your human morals. When you go fight in the war you don’t think about the other side’s families or life outside the war you are simply fighting for your family, this can sometimes blind people to the fact of you just might end up killing your brother. 

One is set in the desert one is set in Ireland, two different places. These settings are so far apart but so similar. The setting in shooting an elephant is in Africa a very dry place where not much grows, but animals still flourish. In the sniper, it is in Ireland a place that gets a lot of rain, and plants can be the ones flourishing. More specifically the setting is in a town in Ireland where they are fighting in a war. This does not directly relate to Africa but someone lived in that town many people did and this war is to protect them the same as the officer is doing to protect his town.

The stories both hold deep meanings that must be interpreted by the reader. These characters both went through something cruel with the sniper having to kill his brother as well as the police officer having to kill that elephant and it died a slow and painful death. They both had to do their responsibility and take things into their own hands to complete their task. Sometimes to do responsibilities, you must do things you do not sometimes as this includes even killing your very own brother.