Bullet in the Brain

Everything is criticized at every level in this story, the people by the main character, the main character by the author and even the story by the author as well. The cruel egoistic personality of Anders is definitely identifiable through these different levels of criticism. I will prove that the inner motivation of this behaviour derives from Anders’ egoistic personality which sometimes makes him cruel against others, sometimes against himself. Furthermore, I will prove that whenever Anders criticizes somebody or something he actually tries to punish because of the imperfectness of the object. In order to make the referring to the different part of the story easier I divide it into three parts. The first part ends when the robbers appear at the door of the bank, the second ends when one of the robbers shoots at Anders and the left is the third part.

First of all, if we have a look at the title, Bullet in the Brain, it is about an inanimate thing, the bullet, and not about the feeling of the person who dies because of it, not even the process that leads to this fatal event or the people’s reaction to it, no, it only says something in connection with the small piece of metal. The author totally ignores Anders’s emotions in the story by giving such a title to his work. We can say he criticises what the main character does and represents. In the first part Anders’ critical behaviour is against others, a teller and a crybaby. In the case of the teller, it seems to be obvious to criticise her because of her negligence but Andrers’ remarks on the crying baby shows a little bit too strict attitude. The teller is not doing her best to make the customers satisfied so she deserves to be criticized but the little baby is normally unaccountable for crying. Anders would not make a remark on the baby if he considered not only his own but the baby’s feeling as well. Since the baby probably suffers from waiting long too.

The second part is much more complicated. Here Anders’ criticism is not only against others but also against himself which is confusing. He passes the time by criticising a painting on the ceiling in an extremely grave situation when everyone else do what they are told to by the robbers in order to live through the danger. He even dares to gibe at the robbers and make ironic remarks on their usage of words. By ignoring what the robbers do and say he makes the situation worse as the robbers start to lose their head because of him. Obviously, a nervous robber is much more dangerous than a disimpassioned one. Anders would consider this but he does not and perils the others and, of course, himself as well. He does this even so when he is asked not to do by a woman next to him. Definitely, the woman is aware of the seriousness of the situation unlike Anders and tries to save her and maybe the others’ life as well. Such a person who does not take care of a dangerous situation is fatuous but in this case Anders does not take care of the others’ safety and considers the criticism more important than the people’s life around him.

This expresses his egoistic personality since the robbers could shoot someone else as well out of anger. Maybe the painting on the ceiling is not a masterpiece and the robbers are not professional ones but this does not mean that they are to be punished because of their imperfectness. There are numerous kinds of paintings and each of them is liked by someone as people’s taste is quite different. And the robbers’ usage of Italian words is probably a mask to cover their emotions that they are as frightened as the people around them. The only difference between these two kinds of fear is the thing people and the robbers are afraid of. People are afraid of the robbers and they are afraid of the police and of the possible consequences of the robbery.