Bullet in the Brain
The story Bullet in the Brain is full of cleverness, tension as well as humor. The author, Wolf, implies that a person’s life flashes before their eyes at death, evoking sympathetic feelings form the audience. The main character, Anders, is a typical literature faultfinder and initially engages in a demeaning and mocking conversation with women in a bank. He continues the raillery even after robbers invade the back threatening everyone. One of the robbers shoots Anders due to his endless laughter, and subsequently, Anders cannot recall work boredom, discontent in family, love, and professional jealousness. Wolf portrays Anders as an insensitive and arrogant individual besides showing an offhand attitude as he deals with the robbers.
However, despite the negative depiction, Wolf brings some positive Anders’s positive attributes as a non-judgmental and lovable character. For instance, Anders never confronted the boy who uttered, “short’s the best position they is.” That was because he acknowledged the differences between him and the young boy. Criticizing books appears to have altered Anders’s thinking ways, including he lived his daily life since mastering critiquing abilities. Notably, critiquing as career impacted Anders to an extent; he sees nothing positive and only recalls his other good life only after his death. As tension builds up between Anders, the women, and robbers, one striking thing is the bullet transfers the readers from the natural to the supernatural world.
Wolf depicts the transformation in what Anders can remember clearly without any disappointment. After Ander’s death, Wolf notes that gun “will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love.” Nonetheless, the story’s central theme is not clear. However, one thing that stands out is that funny and unreasonable characters like Anders are humorous because, under typical circumstances, one cannot be irritable to strange people and bank robbers. Overall, Bullet in the Brain is a comic but interesting book highlighting the dark side of a person’s career and its effects on their lives.