Analysis Of Bullet To The Brain By Tobias Wolff

“Our days are filled with a constant stream of decisions. Most are mundane, but some are so important that they can haunt you for the rest of your life.” Travis Bradberry. It is interesting how little decisions people make everyday can change their life. Such is the case of Anders in “Bullet to the Brain” whose love of words and his hatred of the mundane cause him to make bad decisions. The combination of these two elements of his life contribute directly to his being shot. People need to read this story in their twenties, because in a person’s twenties they think that they have life figured out and that nothing can hurt them. This story shows that in reality how a person treats others and the words they chose to use can kill them, because life is not always mundane and predictable.
Tobias Wolff in the short story “Bullet to the Brain” creates a character Anders that people can relate to because everyone knows someone like Anders. Anders feels superior to other people and feels as if people are boring and predictable. Anders uses his vast vocabulary to make others feel inferior. He uses exaggerations to make the lady in front of him feel like she is

overreacting even though he agrees with her and is just as frustrated with the teller closing. “Anders had conceived his own towering hatred for the teller…” He uses his love of words to mask his hatred of the mundane. He compares the teller closing early to “...bombing an ancestral village.” This characterization makes a reader not really care what happens to him. However, Anders being shot in the head and the last thought he has makes you feel sorry for him in a way.
Unfortunately, his behavior prior to his being shot proves to be his undoing. When the bank is robbed and Anders views the robbery as an ordinary event that is following a bad movie script he lets his mouth get the better of him. Anders makes fun of the robber’s lack of original dialog and draws attention to himself. He mistakenly thinks that them being uncreative is mundane and ridiculous so they would be less lethal. Anders felt superior to the robbers in that their words and actions were boring and predictable, so that led him to be cocky when talking to them. “When the robber with the pistol says “capiche’ he laughs at him which is the reason he is shot.
Once the bullet enters his brain the reader is given incite into Anders mundane life. The author uses this in order to get the reader to feel some sort of sympathy for Anders. It is then that the reader can see why Anders felt his life was ordinary. None of the major events in his life were important enough to think of as he is dying. He does not think of his wife or his children as he is dying. His entire adult life has had nothing exciting happen in it. It is sad that he found everything in life so boring and predictable. That gives the reader incite into what type of person he is and why he is the way he is. There is a line about Anders intentionally “crashing his father’s car into a tree”. This tells the reader that Anders just wanted to feel something real. It is sad that in his whole life he did not have any exciting and joyful moments. The only time he felt true excitement and joy was when his cousin breaks from the mundane and uses incorrect grammar.
This story is important for twenty-year old’s to read, because they think they got everything figured out and nothing can hurt them. A person’s twenties are a time of freedom and thinking they know more than any other adult. That viewpoint tends to make people feel like nothing can ever hurt them. Twenty somethings view life as a big game and do not consider consequences and today twenty somethings view life as a movie with no basis in reality. There are several examples of those behaviors in the story “Bullet in the Brain” Anders failed to realize the danger of the situation throughout the entire story. People in their twenties do not realize that life is not a game and that actions have consequences. This story is full of examples of what twenty somethings should learn from this story.
When the robbers first enter and take hostages Anders immediately make fun of their predictable language, “Dead meat.” He is angered that they are using such predictable language. He refers to their language as “The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.” This is an example of how thinking you are invincible can cause you to act irrationally and cause you to make bad decisions. By opening his mouth and commenting on the vocabulary of the robbers Anders draws attention to himself. That is not something a normal person would want to do. The rest of the bystanders kept to themselves, but not Anders. He always seems to have the last word.
When the robbers focus their attention on the teller that angered everyone in the beginning of the story and talk bad to her he calmly tells the lady in front of him “Justice is done.” He is not taking the robbery seriously. Anders appears to view this entire robbery as a game. He does not recognize the danger that they are all in. A rational man would have been afraid, but he feels that this is all just a big game and people do not normally die in a bank robbery. Once again this calls attention to himself. This time the gunman addresses him directly. He then uses his love of words to make fun of the gunman directly. This is how his love of words leads to his death, because it makes him a target.
His hatred for the mundane plays a part in his death in that when looking at the ceiling he starts to notice everyday things in the painting that he never noticed before. He finds it funny how the artists gave the cow and the bull different features that made their intentions toward each other know. He sees this as predictable and funny so that causes him to laugh. This leads the robber to ask what he is laughing at. This altercation ends with him laughing at the use of the word capiche. Capiche is a word that Anders considered predictable in this situation so he cannot control his laughter. His laughing at the robber for his use of the word capiche is the direct cause of the robber shooting him.
How a person treats others can have consequences in life.

Anders thought that he could say or do whatever he chose without anything happening to him. Just because people have a love for language and chose to expand their vocabulary they should not use it to belittle others and they need to realise that life is not always mundane and predictable. People who are missing things in life can focus on things that they can master such as language. By mastering that it makes a person feel superior to others with a lower vocabulary, but that does not feel the hole of what is missing in their life. The old saying that “words can never hurt you” did not take into account that the things you do and say to other people can cause them to hurt you. That is a lesson that every person needs to learn not just young

people.