Tobias Wolff's Bullet In The Brain

Improved Essays
In “Bullet in the Brain” (1995), Tobias Wolff demonstrates the story of a man dead in the bank. The man named Anders who is a book critic, but his criticism ends up being shot in the head during a bank robbery. However, the story does not end that point, Wolff adds more to the story about experiences one final memory his childhood after being shot. childhood is important. The different ways that Wolff depicts his childhood greatly influences the tone of the essay.
Many people assumed that right before you die, you will see their life flash before your eyes. But, for Anders, it was a bit different. Wolff describes that he did not remember any thing that he spent his whole life focusing on. Such as, he does not remember his first love, his wife, his daughter playing with her teddy bears, the hundreds of poems he had committed to memory in his youth. Also he did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. However, he remembered one particular scene from his childhood. As Wolff writes “This is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tress as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game.” Anders only remembered a boyhood game of neighborhood baseball on a hot, insect-buzzed day. In this passage, Wolff depicts Anders’s memory very peacefully. According to the memories of his childhood, one of the players brought his cousin from Mississippi, who is asked what position he wants to play. Wolff writes that the boy who came from Mississippi answered “Shortstop. Short’s the best position they is.” Anders was fascinated by the moment. As Wolff stated earlier, he does not remember many important things in his life. But he remembers even a small detail of his childhood. Moreover, Wolff writes: The other will think he’s being jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But
…show more content…
Wolff states “Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in the right field to smack his sweat- blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.” It is sound of those last two words which captivates Anders. It might have been the beginning of Anders’s life as a critic. In the present, he critiques for a living, moreover he criticized everything. He wasted his whole life by just being a jerk. According to Wolff, when the boy answered with incorrect grammar, Anders thought that “The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all”. Anders loss of innocence and childhood. Also, this moment in his life is directly link to his early death. Because he can not distinguish between his job and personal life. Wolff depicts, Anders has something rude to say at all times in the story, even while a man is pointing a gun at him. So the robber gets so frustrated with this annoying man that he ends up shooting him. When he dies, he has to flashback all the way back to his childhood to remember when he wasn’t judging which means He regret his whole life and his

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Double Exposure is a novel written by Brain Caswell. This story is told from multiple perspectives this gives us multiple sides of the story to show the effects of trauma which is present throughout all of the character’s lives and how they have responded to the trauma and the walls they have put up for protection. Caswell uses dreams and flashbacks throughout the book to show the trauma that each of the main characters have experienced and how it has lead to how they act now. Trauma effects can be profound and sometimes invisible in people, Caswell portrays this though Cain and the creation of his Chris persona. Cain built up Chris’s persona as a way to deal with losing his twin brother, he is living Chris life to make up for his guilt (Quote)…

    • 315 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In “Francine Wheeler gives President Obama's Weekly Address,” Mrs. Wheeler uses reflective writing in her speech to convey her point of view on the controversial topic of “Commonsense Gun Responsibility Reform.” Mrs. Wheeler elegantly reflects on the event that resulted in the death of her six-year-old son and the effect this event had on past, present, and future consequences concerning her family and citizens of Unites States; while eliciting activism from viewers through empathy and sympathy through a common voice. My Reaction to Mrs. Wheeler’s effective reflective speech on “Commonsense Gun Responsibility Reform” inspired empathy, sympathy, and activism. Empathy rose up within me when Mrs. Wheeler describes the relationship…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Our Secret”, by Susan Griffin is a complex text which portrays an arrangement of themes and topics, which all relate in the end. Griffin began this chapter as she continued her life as a feminist write, poet, essayist, teacher and many more. She writes a chapter of her book that focuses on the idea of connections and how they have affected her life. The essay that will be introduced is written from her book A Chorus of Stones and is called Our Secret. It is a shocking chapter and a reflection on the consequences of others that have abused, physically or mentally or both, by committing acts of emotional violence.…

    • 1996 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    On the surface, Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker is the story of the bonds connecting seemingly unrelated people in the aftermath of one man’s traumatic brain injury. Passages regarding the historical significance of cranes in relation to human development, or an anecdote about a hunter killing a father crane, feel trivial. Animal descriptors seem to be used only to compliment Mark Schluter’s primal behaviors post-trauma. Daniel’s beliefs regarding improving the environment seem like a means of giving personality to an otherwise near useless character. Powers introduces all of these elements into the novel, however, in order to demonstrate the opposite.…

    • 1748 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Cure Archetypal Quest

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Erik is a lonely and neglected bully and the beginning of the film. While Erik is home alone, he goes outside and strikes up a conversation with the boy on the other side of the fence. On the other side of the fence is Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS. Erik is already aware and afraid of the fact that Dexter has AIDS, but he is willing to talk to anyone who will listen. The boys are both lonely and bored and talk to each other to pass the time.…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the father’s optimism is retained by his son’s endurance as the boy symbolizes hope. The appalling circumstances of the world results in the characters’ pessimism where they experience feelings of doubt during their journey. However, the father’s reassurance inspires his son to sustain the voyage, accordingly motivating the man’s own persistence. As he confirms his son’s survival day after day, the man’s faith in hope is fortified, inspiring him to continue their expedition. Generally, in the novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the boy symbolizes hope as he is perceived as a God, and serves as a barrier between his father and death, motivating the ongoing journey.…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Anders who is an English professor at a university enters a bank and is a witness to an armed robbery. He irritates one of the robbers so much that he ends up getting shot in the head. The short story bullet in the brain was published by the New Yorker in 1995. The main character in the short story is a man named Anders who is a book critic and has become very complacent with his work. He has not only become bored with his work, but the things surrounding him as well, so much that he finds the need to judge everything and everyone around him.…

    • 873 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Markus Zusak's’ “The Book Thief”, he makes Death the narrator. Yes, death takes your loved ones away from you, but Death is not all bad, he has compassion too. “The Book Thief” takes place in Nazi, Germany, while a young girls brother dies, and her parents go missing, and is forced to live in a foster home. Death displays his compassion by showing how attentive he is to Liesel, how his job impacts him, and his obsession with colors. Death assembled Liesel’s fearless encounters, to share with others.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the brain” is written as though it was a film and this rhetorical manner evokes a visual, a sonorous, and a neurotic feeling. Yet, even though it seems like a movie, there is a realism to it. Wolff generates a sad ending from the most ordinary thing a human could be doing and this is expressed through the eyes of the story’s narrator that knows how to bring the important details to light. The point of view greatly influences the construction of the story and its meaning; by means of different stylistic approaches, the story’s point of view gradually unfolds and reveals that behind the main character’s harsh personality is hidden a sensitive side. Wolff is known to be a minimalist writer that is “concerned…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In dystopian worlds “The Lottery” and the “Tell-Tale Heart” the authors use their writing style to shock the reader. They use tricky tactics, rich writing style, and irony to keep the reader engrossed to the story. Both authors differ in their approaches to writing style, while using the similar techniques. In both stories the authors starts with an ironic title as “Tell-Tale-Heart” either “The Lottery” which tricks the reader to expect something different.…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I also enjoyed the way Wolff transformed Anders throughout the story. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the baseball memory as well. What stood out to me was that Anders did not criticize the cousin, he ran off in a trance chanting "They is" almost as if his laughter and joy is contained. Anders responded with sarcasm to everything the robber said except "Capiche" which he laughed at. Did the use of "They is" and "Capiche" catch him off guard in similar ways, like it was the best thing he'd ever heard?.…

    • 194 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Basement Humans are made for battle, some psychological, others more physical. We are born into a broken world where battles are what we know best, but they aren’t the only thing we know. We also have an undenying will to survive even though sometimes we fail to acknowledge its presence. The fact is, without survival there can’t be another battle. So one after the other, we continue to struggle through whatever life, or in some cases death, has to throw at us.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, is a nonfiction novel about the mass murder of an innocent family. Though highly acclaimed, the book ends up falling short of its nonfiction description, as the article, “Critical Essay on In Cold Blood”, argues that there is great bias in In Cold Blood in the form of sympathy towards the main character, Perry Smith, which is certainly true. Instead of following the conventional format of a nonfiction mystery novel, Capote uses In Cold Blood as an outlet to express his sympathy towards Perry Smith, the man who ruthlessly murdered four innocent members of the Clutter family. This evident bias hampers Capote’s attempt at an impartial account of the Clutter family mass homicide.…

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Through the use of rhetorical strategies, Truman Capote manipulates the reader’s emotions by portraying Perry Smith in In Cold Blood as a sympathetic character. Perry Smith, along with his partner Dick Hickock, murder the Clutters, a well loved family in the town of Holcomb, Kansas. This small town consists of people, who immediately outkast the murders because they only understand their own lives, and nothing outside of Holcomb. Although there are two murderers, this rhetorical analysis will solely focus on Perry’s traumatic childhood. To share an outsider’s point of view of the situation, Capote uses simile, alliteration, and theme to influence the reader to sympathize with Perry, rather than to condemn him.…

    • 1113 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What would it be like if you had a watch that could tell you when you would die? Would you settle your personal affairs on order, if so at what price? Would you be tempted to buy products at a special discounted pricing that would bring negative outcome? In this thought-provoking book by Van Fleisher which depicts the current reality in the USA identifies what triggers within the society.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays