Does "The Sniper" contain any symbolism?

This is a good question, because, at first glance, this
story of suspense does not seem to contain anything that could be argued to be a symbol.
However, I think there is a case to think of the body of the sniper's enemy as a symbol
of a much wider issue: the horrors of civil war and how it divides families and rips
countries apart.

To me, one of the most significant parts
of the story is when we are told how the sniper feels after he has vanquished his
opponent, and he sees his enemy's corpse fall off the roof and onto the ground "with a
dull thud." The next paragraph, to my mind, is one of the most important in the whole
tale because it effectively foreshadows the revelation at the
end:

The
sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered. 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.

Here we see the
emotional impact of the civil war on the sniper himself as he begins to realise the
horror of what is going on. In his weakened, emotional state he becomes full of
"remorse" and begins to curse "everybody". This leads up to the final revelation of how
he has actually killed his brother, but it also, to my mind, acts as a wider symbol of
what the author is trying to communicate: civil war destroys whole nations but it also
operates on a much smaller level, destroying families and pitting them against each
other.