A bullet, from a literal standpoint, gives off a negative connotation and often makes the reader feel some sort of fear or terror. Throughout Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff plays with these ideas and morphs the readers mind into thinking of it as more of a symbol than a literal object. His usage and mention of the bullet throughout the majority of the text emphasizes its importance, and shows that there is an underlying meaning behind this seemingly common object. Throughout the protagonist Anders’ life, he has had some sort of figurative “bullet” wedged into it. Although the bullet does not take its physical form until later in his life, he has always had something holding him back from his full potential. Wolff intendeds for the bullet in the story to symbolize not only the physical penetrative force that characterizes a bullet, but also the mental barrier that Anders’ has with the people he interacts with. Although the bullet in the story ultimately kills Anders at the end of the story, the bullet was already wedged into his brain at an early age. Wolff gives the reader a perspective of Anders’ life as a young child to show the readers why he is so critical about the way of speaking and language. His rudeness to the two women standing in line with him at the teller shows that there is some sort of underlying problem within him that may unfold later in the story. The readers are immediately made aware within the first few sentences of the text that Ander’s is an irritable and grumpy character. Wolff characterizes Anders like this in the beginning of the story to allow the reader to make inferences as to why Anders is like this. The “bullet” in the story works to tie together all of the factors of Anders’ current and past life, and allows the reader to fully understand how this bullet shaped Anders into the man he is today.

As Anders stands in line waiting for the teller to come, it is evident that he has little patience for things not going his way. “Damned unfair, he said. Tragic, really. If they’re not chopping off the wrong leg” (Wolff 200).  Immediately, the readers form a negative opinion about Anders, and do not understand his rational for being rude. As the bank robbers approach and Ander’s feels the need to correct their grammar, even given the severity of the situation at hand. It becomes clear that Anders is a critic by nature if he continues to voice his opinion in such a sever situation. 

To fully understand why Anders is such an uptight and irritable person, as presented in the first part of the story, Wolff goes back in time to Anders’ childhood. The “bullet” that essentially set him off as a child can be traced back to two simple words, “they is” (Wolff 205). This seemingly small grammatical error made by one of his childhood friends set him off to a completely new level of critical thinking. He had never heard such an error in grammar before, but for some reason, this small error made him completely reevaluate his since of thinking, and the way he went about his life. This word, in a since, was the trigger for the early bullet in Anders’ life. It is baffling that this sort of bullet could seemingly penetrate his life in this sort of way. He lived a regular life with little to no worries about any of his surroundings. These two simply words would function to be the detrimental to Anders later in his life. He began to completely rethink the way he went about things in his daily life, and only focused on the minute things that are not the most important things in life. As a book critique, it makes sense that Anders would naturally be apt to being analytical in nature but he begins to transform into a grammatical monster, and cannot seem to have any joy in his life without correcting the people around him. He does not realize how detrimental this characteristic trait can be for him until he is forced into a situation where he cannot voice his opinion whenever he wants. The bullet was already “wedged” so deeply into his brain, there was no way of escaping. The bullet completely changed his mindset, and altered his way of mind. The readers can assume that before this moment in his childhood, Anders went about life normally, and did not quite care how other people spoke. This figurative bullet penetrated his way of thinking at a early age to completely change the way he processed conversations. In his adult life, he could not help laughing and joking around every time he heard someone miss use a word, or make a slang word out of a proper term. 

The effects of Anders’ figurative bullet in his brain eventually led to a physical bullet when he was faced with a situation where he could not openly correct someone for their errors in language speaking. He jokes around when one of the bank robbers does not speak grammatically correct, and does not hesitate to verbalize why the robber is incorrect. “There you go,” Anders said to the woman in front of him. Justice is done.” (Wolff 202). He cannot help but to be a critique in every aspect of his life. This eventually leads him to being penetrated with the actual bullet in his brain. He never thought that such a simple waver in his way of thinking triggered by one memory of his childhood, would ultimately lead him to his death. Wolff ties in this idea of a figurative bullet toward the end of the story when he discusses some of Anders’ only memories he still posses after being shot. He can only seem to remember one memory from his childhood, and it so happens to be the memory of the first speaking error he had ever witnessed. For some reason, this one memory in particular stood out to him in such a way that he could not cease to forget it. This even better represents the fact that this memory triggered a bullet of its own for Anders that completely made him look at life differently.

Wolff combines the literal meaning and negative connotation associated with a bullet with its figurative meaning as a symbol throughout the story, to show the reader that it can serve as a symbol of immediate and sudden change. Whether that change be mental and within a characters own thoughts, or a physical change, once the bullet has penetrated, it is often hard to get it out. As observed in Anders’ early childhood, his bullet was lodged in his brain from an early age. Once he had changed his mindset to looking for any single thing he could find wrong in speaking, it was hard for him to change his ways. This served detrimental to him later in life when he could not stand to let an error go unnoticed. This could not be overlooked, even in a sever situation like a robbery. In the end, the symbolic bullet in Anders’ brain essentially stayed there until a physical and real one replaced it. This figurative bullet ultimately led to his death.
