Tobias Wolff's Bullet In The Brain

The book Concussion is written by Jeanne Marie Laska in 2015. This story is in the midst of being a dramatic and a sports genre book. The author introduces the story with a descripted scene of the main character, Bennet Omalu, being in a courtroom testifying. Further into the book is when the backstory begins. The story is about an impactful cause of death that Bennet Omalu discovers while doing an autopsy on one of the most important football players in history. Doctor Omalu is then stuck in between telling the world his discoveries or letting athletes continue dying due to the trauma.

Imagine death. What happens in your final moments? Are you going to think about your loved ones or just simply reminisce on one of the happiest moments of your existence? What would be your very final thought to think? The short story, “Bullet in the Brain”, is a very intriguing, well-articulated fictional writing piece that captures what happens in the split second of death through the main character Anders. Written by Tobias Wolff, the story follows a man who finds the cliché in anything and his final thoughts of his life as a bullet is moving through his brain. Saying I enjoyed this story would be the understatement of the century. The short story is purely brilliant and one of the most thought-provoking stories I have read in a while.

Susannah Cahalan, a 24 year old, healthy and successful journalist for the New York post, experienced an acute onset of psychosis. Symptoms ranged from paranoia to seizures, which eventually led to a catatonic state. The onset of the female’s symptoms occurred when she became paranoid of a bed bug infestation in her home, yet after having her home exterminated there was no indication of bedbugs. Concern arose from her nonexistent appetite and severe insomniac behaviors. She began noticing her own erratic behaviors and shortly after experienced her first seizure episode. In search of an answer to reoccurring seizures she went to a physician who put her on Keppra (an antiseizure medication) and warned her the symptoms were due to stress and heavy drinking. The increasing paranoia developed into hallucinations, people plotting against her or speaking poorly of her. EEG and MRI results exhibited normal results; further indicating stress and alcohol withdraw. After being admitted to the NYU medical school EEG monitoring floor, examination showed tangential, disorganized, and temperamental behaviors. Several escape attempts later, placed Susannah in the more difficult patients category. Doctors suggested conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and cancer. She exhibited abnormally high blood pressure pointing to extreme concern.

Erik Larson shapes a story of suspense and excitement through juxtaposition, foreshadow, fantasy, and direct quotes. Through these different strategies, he is able to hold the reader’s attention while describing true history in a contemporary way. Larson takes Truman Capote’s idea of a nonfiction novel and creates his own story of a murderer in important history.

In the book “The Assault,” by Harry Mulisch, the author demonstrates how the main character, Anton, becomes free of the influence of his memories by showing that Anton's approach to memory changes over the novel course of the novel – from protective denial to acknowledgment. However, what remains static is a constant self awareness that Anton shows in-regards to his attempts to repress these memories. During the beginning of the novel (post-tragedy) Anton is a shell of his memories of the night where is family was killed. This is shown through how many details of his character, from major life aspects such as his wife or his job, to insignificant things such as what sorts of media he likes, can all be traced back to his allegedly forgotten memories.  The

In “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff, a character named Anders is shot in the head. As the bullet is traveling through his head and his life fades away, his last memory is portrayed as one of his favorite days, “This is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field,” (Wolff 4). Instead of remembering his family or friends, he remembered a simple time where everything was once easy. As a boy, Anders was able to enjoy his life with not a worry in the world. One day in the summer, he met a boy during a baseball game. As they decided which positions to play, he became intrigued with the words that came out of the boy’s mouth, “Shortstop… Short's the best position they is," (Wolff 4). As Anders comprehended this unique

Tobias Wolff uses imagery in his short story “Bullet in the Brain” provides a visual portrait that captures attention. He clarifies in an interview with Sanford University what short stories require, “You want large results from it, and you 're compelled by its very shortness to using all your resources of language, form and understanding” (Schrieberg 1998). He uses language in the story offering instances of imagery to describe the media critic. Anders is portrayed as weary, and elegantly savage in his reviews. In each scene of the story Anders observes and uses biting words to offer his approval or distaste. He uses words to critique events while waiting with the customers at the bank, with the thieves and with the shot starting his recollections. There is a deeper vision into his brain not only with the speeding bullet but incite to words. The use of imagery in the short story provides a distorted image of the character Anders, not the real image of a man with the passion for words and the happiness they create.

There is always a process or stages in which things works or grow. They starts from the beginning and gradually work itself through the correct transformation or process.

In my opinion, the most important analyzation from Bullet in the Brain is Anders himself. His thoughts and actions come from a deep dwelling inside him and mean much more than the superficial words, which structure the story, relay. From the beginning, Wolff reveals the intelligence and personality of Anders by labeling him as, “a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed” (Wolff, 1995, p. 200-206). This is relevant throughout the story as he continuously degrades other characters with his smart, sarcastic wit. His bold, irritable sense of humor does not dwindle in the least even at the realization that the bank he’s currently in is being threatened by two armed robbers. It becomes clear that Anders has no fear of dying when he has to hold back laughter at the poke of the barrel of a gun pressed to his side. It’s not until after the bank robber forces a gun up under Anders’ jaw that hints of his past begin to surface. The gun under his chin had lifted his face to the ceiling, making him take notice of the mythological figures painted above him. These figures Anders had noticed before, but he never payed attention to them again after that. When analyzed, this produces the belief that Anders had been religiously faithful at one point in his life but

“ Sometimes you need conflict in order to come up with a solution. Through weakness oftentimes, you can not make the right sort of settlement, so I am aggressive, but I also get things done, and in the end, everybody likes me”( Donald Trump). This quote kind of means that you can not come up with a solution if there are no problems. In literature, so many authors use the literary element conflict to develop their stories. Conflict in the terms of literature is split into three branches, there is Man against Self, Man against Man, Man against Nature. In the short writing “Bullet in the brain”, by Tobias Wolff; the main character Anders faces all three conflicts. Conflicts causes humans to react in other ways depending on how big of

Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” is about a man who is a book critic. He recalls his lost a memory of childhood after being shot in the head during a bank robbery. In the beginning of the story, Anders’ personality is revealed as cynical, narcissistic, and pompous. As the story reaches its end, Anders reveals another side of his personality that has been hidden from the beginning of the story. Anders is presented as an unsympathetic character, but the author uses different points of view in the story that makes the audience sympathetic towards him in the end. The author uses different third person perspective, symbolism, and setting to contribute to the theme of the story that a human’s personality changes by time, and environment or experience.

Education offers endless doors of opportunity for the people who pursue it. Not only does knowledge breed confidence, but it sets society on a path and purpose towards success. Wandering without a purpose, people lose their goals and aspirations. Some individuals never find direction, developing a sense of insecurity and isolation. They begin to have thoughts which result as defense mechanisms to safeguard them from feeling alone and abnormal. When these reactions happen, the outcome of their actions become unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. Moreover these individuals will create their own world from their insecurities and act on them like reality. Often, these cases embody victims of mental disorders, overlooked by society. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote suggests criminals deserve careful analysis, an unpopular opinion; he refers to the lives of two characters, dreams shattered, suffering from the same fate. Through the investigation of a detective bureau and the author 's interpretation, the perpetrators symbolize a bigger picture. Although the details of the crime convey Perry as a cold-blooded murderer, Capote illustrates Perry as a victim of his childhood by emphasizing his insecurities and fears.

In the article from The Atlantic Magazine, entitled “Why One Neuroscientist Started Blasting His Core”, James Hamblin taps into the hot topic of stress relief methods; specifically through exercise, at the forefront of popular media today. To provide an avenue through which to do so, he tells the story of a neuroscientist by the name of Peter Strick. Due to the way Strick’s brain works, he was initially unable to accept the commonly made claim that activities, such as yoga, have a direct impact on an individual’s stress level without concrete facts and reasoning backing this up. While both directing his intriguing, informative material at the scientific community and the general population enveloped in the pull of the media, Hamblin leaves

The style of eliciting non-memory and memory emphasises the lost of innocence of childhood and of life lived in contrast with life wasted, and the disillusionment that followed leading to his insensitivity and ultimate self-destruction. This information is expository, but it flashes back to Anders' past. The author uses effectively the flashback to provide another viewpoint of the central character because Anders was pictured as unsympathetic in the beginning of the story. The memory itself, fittingly, is narrated in present tense in contrast with most of the story

Traumatic brain injury occurs when a person is hit in the head with a blunt force. This significant force to the head can happen playing recreational sports, on the playground, being in a car or motorcycle accident, falling down at home and your head impacting something, a blast or explosion. Traumatic brain injuries are also the leading cause of fatality rate and disability, especially in children, young adults and elderly. TBI is a devastating condition that affects millions of people nationwide, because it can affect the nervous system permanently, it also messes with the neurological, musculoskeletal, cognitive and much more. TBI force a family to deal with not just the physical disability, with the behavioral and emotional roller