Essay on craft and context: “Bullet in the Brain,” by Tobias Wolff
In the first two-thirds of “Bullet in the Brain,” by Tobias Wolff, there is no backward motion. It is all energy and movement forward. We don’t know much about the main character, Anders, in the beginning of the story, except that he is unkind to the strangers in line with him. As a reader, it seems fitting that a writer would use a literary critic as his anti-hero, a bit of revenge fantasy on the part of the writer.
The point of view for this story captures exactly the tone we need — the very close relationship of the limited omniscient narrator to Anders shows us only Anders, and shows him through and through — not only what Anders believes about himself, but also what this close but more objective narrator believes about Anders, and in the gap between Anders and the narrator is a world of commentary about Anders and his ascerbic personality.
As Anders stands in line at the bank, using sarcasm to create tension between himself and the others in line, a crew of bank robbers enters the bank and starts demanding silence and money. Anders, being incapable of silence, and incapable of allowing any clichéd language to go unnoticed, laughs out loud at the robbers, who use language they’ve probably heard in movies to sound like tough guys. Anders finds their trite language so funny that he cannot contain himself, even as he knows that he is irritating the bank robbers, at risk to his own life.
And sure enough, they kill him. He must die for this story to make sense. But at the moment that the bullet enters the brain of Anders, Woolf begins allowing us to learn some context about Anders: primarily, that he hasn’t always been so miserable. That there was a time when he was young, and wild, and free in his thinking.We learn from the narrator that Anders goes back 40 years to a summer afternoon, but before we go back there, we learn a few things that Anders is not thinking about. For example, we’ve understood that Anders has an ascerbic personality, but our narrator reinforces it, letting us know that Anders has no productive and healthy relationships. We learn about an ex-girlfriend, an ex-wife, an alienated daughter, a classmate who didn’t become a friend, a suicidal neighbor unknown to Anders, some police officers who abused him, and writers he despises for writing.
We learn from the narrator that Anders goes back 40 years to a summer afternoon, but before we go back there, we learn a few things that Anders is not thinking about. For example, we’ve understood that Anders has an ascerbic personality, but our narrator reinforces it, letting us know that Anders has no productive and healthy relationships. We learn about an ex-girlfriend, an ex-wife, an alienated daughter, a classmate who didn’t become a friend, a suicidal neighbor unknown to Anders, some police officers who abused him, and writers he despises for writing.
As a curious reader, I’d like to know more about Anders’ relationships with his ex-wife and daughter, and why he isn’t married or staying in touch with his daughter. But Wolff is right to give me less of that because it doesn’t matter. Just the hint that he has a strained relationship with his daughter tells me everything I need. Daughters are almost always willing to embrace their fathers, if only there’s the slightest attempt on the father’s side to be embraced, and by the time I learn about Anders’ daughter, I’m not surprised that he can’t maintain a good relationship with the one person most likely to be inclined toward him.
Once we learn about what Anders is NOT thinking about, we arrive at the promised scene, 40 years prior, the scene that Anders will die remembering. It is here that our story and its context really move together, and this is an energizing moment for the reader.
Is Anders the anti-hero that Tobias Wolff promised to create for us in the opening moments of the story? In some ways, yes, of course. He dies ignobly. However, the writer’s work, at its core, is empathy, and even Anders can be redeemed in some way. In spite of himself, Tobias Wolff cannot help but to show empathy for Anders.
The empathy comes in the back story, the context. As Anders dies, his mind rests upon a moment: he is a child, and the mind of the critic is not yet cynical. Instead, his sharp and critical mind is focused on the lyricism of language, as a child from Mississippi says something that is not grammatically correct but is lyrical and expressive and beautiful. In this moment of context, we understand why Anders has become an angry person, and why he has expressed this anger as a literary critic. It is because he has lost the magic of language, has lost his sense of beauty in the surprises of language. Yet that magic of language has always resided within him, and it comes back to relieve his pain in his final moments.
As Wolff creates this scene, he makes his own choices about what details will be included, and although this reader might like to know more about Anders, I learn enough. The story, like any bullet, makes a searing impact on this reader, and it is the confluence of context with the forward moving story that makes it work.
Wolff, Tobias. 1995. “Bullet in the Brain.” New Yorker, September 25, 1995.
Kirstin Ruth Bratt is a professor, mother, writer who is inspired by live theater and music. She can often be seen walking near the Mississippi River in Minneapolis or holding yoga poses in a hot studio.
