Lit1 Close Reading #1

Darlene McCoy
Madeline McDonald Lane
LIT1
7 October 2010

Attitude in the Anders

Anders, the protaganist in Tobais Wolff’s short story, “Bullet in the Brain”, is a broken man. The loves of his life - simple words, phrases, passages - no longer bring him the joy they once used to. Anders is a book critic, and he does not take his job lightly. He is a man to be feared and abhorred in the literary world, for he, "dispatches almost everything he reviews with a weary, elegant savagrey" (190). Yet, even feared critics need to visit the local bank from time to time to take care of ordinary matters - it's just a shame that poor Anders had no idea that it would be his last.
At the opening of the short story, Anders is standing in a too large for reason line behind two women having a "loud, stupid conversation," and it puts him in a rather snotty mood. When the teller attending the giant line closes her position, one of the women turns around and makes a comment about it, looking for Anders' approval. Being the amazingly sarcastic person he is, Anders responds, "Damned unfair. Tragic, really. If they're not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they're closing off their positions" (190). The woman turns around to look at her friend for her approval of her displeasure with Anders, but her friend’s attention is on others in the room. These others, men in blue suits and ski masks, approach the bank’s guard and put a pistol to his neck. The man holding the pistol yells across the room, "One of you tellers hits the alarm, you're all dead meat. Got it?" (191). Anders, once again, replies as any gutsy, snappy, sardonic book critic in the situation would, "Oh bravo," he says, "Dead meat,” and then turning to his already insulted lady-aquaintance from earlier, “Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes” (191).
As the robbery scence progresses, Anders continues to make his backhanded bitter comments, and they finally draw the attention of the man with the pistol. The man pushes the weapon into Anders’ stomach, which Anders notes because it tickles him, and instead of laughing, he fixes his gaze on the man’s eyes because he figures that laughing in front of a rather batty man with a loaded gun is not an idea that would be beneficial to the prolonging of his life. Because staring contests are somewhat awkward, the criminal asks Anders, in quite the vulgar manner, to stop. Anders looks down then, to the man’s shoes, which he also apparently does not approve of, since he then uses the gun to prop up Anders’ chin, forcing him to stare at the ceiling of the bank.
Anders, once again, on instinct, begins to criticize the art adorning the ceiling. He describes it as, “Even worse than he remembered, and [that] all of it [was] executed with utmost gravity” (192). He especially takes note of a scene in which Zeus and Europa are portrayed as a bull eying a rather scandalous cow. The cow’s “canted hips” and “long, droopy eyelashes” create quite the ruckus in Anders’ brain, and his amusement annihilates his attempts at a serious demeanor. The criminal detects Anders’ breaking of face, and demands of him, “What’s so funny, bright boy?” to which Anders replies, “Nothing.” The robber then adds, “You fuck with me again, you’re history. Capiche?” (192).
Anders cannot help himself. The poor man’s attempts to hold back his laughter finally prove to be futile. He bursts out laughing, and the criminal replies by raising the gun, and shooting the satirical best-seller slaughterer in the head. Ironically, Anders’ life flashes before his eyes - but he does not see his first love, his wife, or his daughter before the bullet exits his brain - he recounts only a memory from his childhood. He remembers the intense heat of a summer day on a baseball field, the local neighborhood boys chatting about something he perceived as so trivial it was oppressive, and a certain boy’s words. These words, these grammatically incorrect, piercing words, “They is. They is. They is,” echo throughout Anders’ brain during the last milliseconds of his life. He recalls his feelings toward them - how he was roused and elated by their total unexpectedness; how that unexpectedness was music to his ears. The bullet bids farewell to its delicate jelly-like obstruction, taking with it, its “comet tail of memory and hope and talent and love” (193). Then his life ends. Anders is no more.
Authors, writers, and poets do not always simply write for pleasure. While the wit written into this short tale is quite entertaining all on its own - “Bullet in the Brain” does have an actual meaning behind its creation. This man - this Anders - is presented as a grumbling, ill-tempered, querulous person who has worked in such a quantity, and with such quality that the joy he used to receive from doing so is naught but a childhood memory. He can no longer appreciate the one thing in the world he loved more than any other; he can no longer appreciate the power of words, and because he cannot, he cannot be genuinely content with any other aspect of his life. Even on the threshold of death, he is incapable of remembering certain points in his life that one would think to be significant - nothing but the misguided phrase “They is.” “They is” - the simple, mindless, alluring phrase spoken by a bumbling boy on a summer’s day - the unexpected and beautiful incorrectness that Anders could never tire of; the odd bliss he felt in the core of his mind: “They is” is all he could remember, because it was one thing in the world that had the ability to entrance him. He extracts this memory of happiness from some corner of his mind, and then the bullet snatches it from him. Anders’ happiness, the echoing words, leave him in the “comet tail of memory and hope and talent and love” (193). At this point in the time, the reader feels some sort of remorse for this misery of a once man, now corpse. But why? Why does the reader feel anything for this antagonizing man? Anders never lived his life the way Tobias Wolff implies that he should have. And what is Wolff implying? Live life to its fullest, because life sometimes ends abruptly and unexpectedly. Do not get caught up in the solemn seriousness of life, because the not-so-serious experiences in life will be missed, and honestly, what else is there to do in life but live, and let live?