They often ask what the payoff is to a story, and we get not only a single scene of a man standing in line and being shot in the head, but how a writer, a true artist, can weave in a single scene a man being murdered at a bank, summarizing his life by what doesn’t cross his mind, and showing us what led him to this moment where he puts himself in a situation to die. So many memories he expected that would flash in front of his eyes were passed over, and by opening that to the reader, we can see the history of Anders. Instead of beginning by describing the thoughts that go through the narrator’s head as the bullet enters, Wolff adds a lot of history in what was not thought of. Then comes the description of the bullet from its entrance into the brain until it exits, with a special focus on what’s in between. When Anders is shot, various scenes from his lifeboth remembered and notbegin to play out in his mind. Despite the lethal destruction, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time (204), and the rules of. The Power of Language Themes and Colors LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Bullet in the Brain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. You learn Anders is a burnt out editor, and as he edits the bank robbers movie script lines, the humor and tension can be felt leading up to the bullet in the brain. The bullet courses through his brain, scattering shards of bone and igniting a crackling chain of ion transports and neuro-transmissions (203-04). Listen to how much happens in a single scene. This brilliant story is a must read by all writer’s of short fiction.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |