Analysis: Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff

Every full-grown cliché began as an embryo of sincerity. Through repetition and misuse, the sacred truth is lost in a sea of banality. It takes a critic of extraordinary insight to part these seas of irrelevance and extract the microscopic morsel of meaning tucked away inside. Anders, the book critic and main character in Tobais Wolff’s short story Bullet in the Brain, is not such a critic—at least not any longer.

The essence of Anders’ character is revealed early on: He is “known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.” The rest of Bullet in the Brain is thus framed in a peculiar perspective; as the story itself is a work of literature, the reader is led to wonder how Anders would critique  it. The perplexingly clever use of self-reference begs the reader to wonder where the limits of Anders’ criticism lie.

Indeed, Anders is not a critic only in the realm of the literary world. Even while waiting in line at the bank, he both silently and verbally criticizes nearly everything his senses bring to his attention. The line is “endless,” an overheard conversation is “loud” and “stupid,” and he immediately deems the woman in front of him a “presumptuous crybaby.” Even when, to Anders, the woman reprimands one of the tellers for closing her position, Anders gripes back, “If they’re not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they’re closing their positions.”

By denouncing even his fellow denouncers, Anders deliberately and continuously cuts himself off from the rest of the world, allowing himself the comfort of lambasting it and, in turn, cutting himself off further. Trapped in an endless feedback loop of isolation and reprobation, Anders is oblivious to the two ski-masked men with guns who have just entered the bank.

At this point, the tone of the story significantly changes for the first time. Instantly, the usually benign environment of the bank is plunged into one of suspense and despair. Anders, however, as the natural antithesis of those feelings, is unfazed. Faced with danger, he does what he always does—he criticizes.

It’s clear that Anders understands the gravity of the situation. It’s clearer that he just doesn’t care. The only thing safe from criticism is his own life, for if he were to reprimand his own actions—or lack thereof—it would take days. Even when the man with the pistol uses the gun to point Anders’ head toward the ceiling, he denounces the classical art painted on the ceiling.

Anders notices the depiction of Zeus as a bull, “ogling” the cow that is Europa. In classical mythology, Zeus became a bull to attract the beautiful Europa. Once she jumped on his back, Zeus swam to the island of Crete, where he revealed his true identity and made Europa the first queen of Crete, and bestowed many wondrous gifts upon her.

The genuine emotion of the painting is morphed into hideous cliché and juvenile humor when passed through Anders’ mind, and he starts to laugh when he imagines the bull exclaiming, “Hubba hubba.”

His mockery causes him to be shot.

The author spares no time in relating this to the reader, and the bluntness makes it apparent that Anders’ story isn’t over yet. In fact, it’s just beginning.

The story’s tone significantly changes once again. We are no longer in fear for Anders, no longer gripped by suspense. Rather, we are caught in a strange equilibrium between life and death. We know that a gunshot to the head is extremely harmful, if not fatal. But for a while, we can visit the inside of Anders’ head, which previously was filled with nothing but criticism and hate. The language of the story begins to captivate, to hypnotize. The bullet sets off a “crackling chain of iron transports and neuro-transmissions,” and moves at a “pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that [flashes] around it.”

The bullet first pierces the cerebral cortex, a powerhouse of the brain responsible for memory, awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. Next, shards of bone scatter into the corpus callosum, basal ganglia, and finally the thalamus, which relays sensory signals to the cerebral cortex. Wolff has used his godly omnipotence to send the bullet into a deliberate and curious full-circle of neurological effects, beginning and ending with the cerebral cortex. Consequently, the particular brain pattern is ideal for Anders.

The narrator isn’t lying to us when he says that it is worth noting what Anders did not remember. The memories that will never again be recalled proceed from embarrassment and mockery to sincerity and grit, from Mr. Mole, a girlfriend’s pet name for his—well, you know—to life and death. The journey is a parallel theme throughout the story, as Anders travels back through time, reversing the pain and dissatisfaction that have piled up like the unread books on his desk. Anders does not remember memorizing Keats’ “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”—a poem, foretellingly, about the emotional power of a great work of art. The roused memory brings him back to a point in his life when he was still filled with wonder, when a few words could cause epiphany.

Once more, the story’s tone changes, from sensational hypnotism to intense description. “Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game.” Zeus’ bullet carries Anders to the island of a baseball field long forgotten, where the reader can understand Anders for the first time. The formalities of grammar and the seriousness of academia fizzle away in the midst of the beauty of something new and unexpected. Anders can once again experience awe, wonder, and fascination—and can, in the words of T. S. Eliot, know the place for the first time.