Pro.Crawford
“Bullet in the Brain”
“Bullet in the Brain” is a short story written by Tobias Wolff. The story is about a book critic named Anders, while waiting in a long line at the bank he is the victim of an armed robbery and gets shot and killed. The story is divided in to two parts, and this division allows the reader to see a contrast between two parts of main character’s personality.
I want to argue in this essay that the combination of Anders love of words and negative past experiences are what led to his death, and demonstrate the contrast of Anders wisdom when he was younger ,and innocence when he was older, as a consequence of that combination.
In the first part of the story when Anders is waiting in line, he’s witness to an armed robbery and he is sarcastic and cynical until he got shot in the head. In the second part the bullet inside Anders brain slows down time to let the reader witness the negative past experience that made him such a cynical sarcastic and childish person that he was when he got shot.
I will start from the second part of the plot when he got shot. In this part of the story we see more sides to Anders character. We have a short summary of Anders past experience in life that made him so cynical and sarcastic like he is to the point he got shot. The highlight of the second part is that the writer made a list of memories that Anders would not remember, the readers, have a better perspective to Anders personality: “He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him-her unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his unit, which she called Mr. Mole As in ‘Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play”. This is an example of Anders personality when he loves a woman and adores her choice of words of how she called he’s genital and gets him irritated after a while.
“Anders did not remembered his wife whom he had also loved before she