Analyse af Tobias Wolffs novelle 'Bullet in the Brain'

The maincharacter in this story is a man called Anders and he works as book critic. Anders is walking into a bank just before closing. In front of him in the line is standing to women. The teller in the line puts up a “POSITION CLOSED” sign, and both the two women and Anders are pissed of. Suddenly two men wearing ski masks enter, they are making a rubbery. The teller who has just left the line in which Anders was standing is ordered back on her spot. The guard in the bank is handcuffed and all the other customers are silent, the only one talking is Anders. One of the rubbers is telling Anders to shut up, but Anders keeps talking. One of the rubbers stucks a pistol under Anders cheek until he was looking at the ceiling. But Anders keep provoking him and at some point when one of the rubbers says “Capiche”, Anders laugh and then the rubber shoot him in the head.

The last part of the story is about what Anders is thinking about just before he dies, which things that are important to him.

B)

Anders is a book critic this means that he is paid to criticize other people and their work. When you have such a job maybe you start believing that you are more worse than the people you criticize. And when the two bank rubbers occurs Anders keep provoking them even though they have a gun pointing to his head. “Anders - a book critic known for the weary elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.” (4-6) The way Anders criticized the rubbers must be said to be far from elegantly. But it was indeed weary to the rubbers that he kept on acting the way he did and it annoyed one of them so much that Anders was shot. Anders thought he was immortal he was used to criticize people in magazines and so forth but in real life among lower middle class, as the rubbers probably belong to, people react different than artists, authors and so on. But Anders did not understand this and that ended up killing him. Anders had never in his wildest dreams thought that this could happen to him. Maybe he thought that he had stepped right into a film or a book, which he is use to criticize. He has read to many books, with the same old boring plot and when it happened to him he did not take it serious. Another indication of that Anders thinks he has stepped into a book or a film is when he said; ““Great script, eh?”” (36)