Memories Shown Through a Bullet
Memories usually come and go, but the ones that are important and help in the shaping of a person are the ones that usually stay. Humans make a lot of memories, some good and some bad, but at the end of they day they are the reason why a person is a certain way.
Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain” shows how Andres, “a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed,” becomes angry after listening to two women have a “loud, stupid conversation [that puts] him in a murderous temper” (Wolff, 200). While impatiently waiting in line, he notices that one of the tellers placed a ‘POSITION CLOSED’ sign in front of her window, and this made Anders …show more content…
Since he is “never in the best of tempers,” it is obvious that once the armed men that have arrived to the bank are going to target him because the readers could predict this event by the title “Bullet in the Brain”(Wolff, 200). His bad temper also reflects the environment because he does not seem happy with the fact that the bank has an “endless” line in which he has to wait. On top of the line, him as well as the people around him will have to wait longer because one of the bankers closed her window. I feel like that serves as a catalyst because he says that “heaven will take note” implying that when she dies, she will not go there because she closed the window on them, and he hopes that God close the doors of heaven for her (Wolff, 201). The mood of the story shifts when the banker left because a moment after she left, the two men who were robbing the bank went inside and scared the customers. In addition, the environment seems to be fit for this occasion because the characters seem unhappy and the robbers just add up to the dullness of the story. I feel like the purpose of the two robbers are to show Anders that life had a meaning, but he was not living up to it because he was always putting in his opinion to everything he saw or …show more content…
This is ironic, because ideally, a person would think that right before someone is dying they would think of there family since they have created a lot of memories together, but in this case he remembers something irrelevant to his adult life. Wolff uses repetition to show that he does not recall his family during his death process. The repetition of the phrase “he did not remember” proves that ideally, an individual dying would be thinking of the precious moments with their family, but this shows that that does not have to be the case in every person's death (Wolff, 204). Him “not [remembering]” shows that his priority in life was to criticise, but in a way something that he loved led him to his death (Wolff, 204). But another reason for him not remembering his because the bullet could have his hippocampal region on the brain thus leading to him forgetting about his loved ones (Scoville). Another possible reason could be that due to his age, he had something wrong on his “frontal cortex” and therefore he could only remember some instances from his life
Memories usually come and go, but the ones that are important and help in the shaping of a person are the ones that usually stay. Humans make a lot of memories, some good and some bad, but at the end of they day they are the reason why a person is a certain way.
Tobias Wolff’s short story “Bullet in the Brain” shows how Andres, “a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed,” becomes angry after listening to two women have a “loud, stupid conversation [that puts] him in a murderous temper” (Wolff, 200). While impatiently waiting in line, he notices that one of the tellers placed a ‘POSITION CLOSED’ sign in front of her window, and this made Anders …show more content…
Since he is “never in the best of tempers,” it is obvious that once the armed men that have arrived to the bank are going to target him because the readers could predict this event by the title “Bullet in the Brain”(Wolff, 200). His bad temper also reflects the environment because he does not seem happy with the fact that the bank has an “endless” line in which he has to wait. On top of the line, him as well as the people around him will have to wait longer because one of the bankers closed her window. I feel like that serves as a catalyst because he says that “heaven will take note” implying that when she dies, she will not go there because she closed the window on them, and he hopes that God close the doors of heaven for her (Wolff, 201). The mood of the story shifts when the banker left because a moment after she left, the two men who were robbing the bank went inside and scared the customers. In addition, the environment seems to be fit for this occasion because the characters seem unhappy and the robbers just add up to the dullness of the story. I feel like the purpose of the two robbers are to show Anders that life had a meaning, but he was not living up to it because he was always putting in his opinion to everything he saw or …show more content…
This is ironic, because ideally, a person would think that right before someone is dying they would think of there family since they have created a lot of memories together, but in this case he remembers something irrelevant to his adult life. Wolff uses repetition to show that he does not recall his family during his death process. The repetition of the phrase “he did not remember” proves that ideally, an individual dying would be thinking of the precious moments with their family, but this shows that that does not have to be the case in every person's death (Wolff, 204). Him “not [remembering]” shows that his priority in life was to criticise, but in a way something that he loved led him to his death (Wolff, 204). But another reason for him not remembering his because the bullet could have his hippocampal region on the brain thus leading to him forgetting about his loved ones (Scoville). Another possible reason could be that due to his age, he had something wrong on his “frontal cortex” and therefore he could only remember some instances from his life