Bullet In The Brain By Tobias Wolff

The concept of death is a mystery to the living. When we lose someone, we grieve the loss but we also take the time to celebrate life. In retrospect, we look at it as meaning to take every minute as if it is the last. In the poem “The Emperor of Ice cream”, Wallace Stevens doesn’t acknowledge death, but uses ice cream to suggest that life is short and precious. However, in “Bullet in the Brain”, Tobias Wolff uses the finality of death to look at someone’s (such as the character) life for one final time through memories and personality in order to show someone’s innocence and significance by what they did in the past. Although Wolff’s story is a good way to use death as it is happening in the present, “The Emperor of Ice Cream” uses the coldness

(Lines 13-14) The author treats it as a normal occurrence and uses the term ‘horny’ to describe her feet. This confuses the reader because of the sexual term being used to describe a dead woman’s feet. Though the term isn’t used in the literal sense that she is sexually aroused, it is used in the sense to show how dry and calloused her feet are after her death. This isn’t the only sexual undertone he uses. Towards the end of the first stanza, Stevens states: In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. (Line 3)

He uses ‘concupiscent’ to describe the main ingredient of ice cream, curds, as something to desire. Although this was used for an alliteration, this can also be interpreted as Stevens wanting to make a contrast between the making of ice cream and the desire for it. Furthermore, Stevens describes the cigar-maker at the beginning of the poem to reader as muscular and big which in turn carries a sexual term which is supported by the women making the ice cream. This can refer to the living and ice cream because pleasure is temporary and ice cream melts sooner or later. Stevens’ sexual terminology in his poem suggests to the reader how pleasurable life is and like ice cream, it gives a temporary sensual high that runs out and is gone which can be related to

In contrast to the poem, Wolff uses his character, Anders, to describe death in a colder, scientific way that is the complete opposite as Stevens’ poem. Though it shows the nostalgia and innocence one has as they die. Wolff’s character, Anders, dies from a gunshot wound that was inflicted by the robber who shot him in retaliation because Anders’ laughed at his speech. As he was shot, his past was revealed and it showed the reader a nice and passionate Anders who loved life. In the story, “Bullet in the Brain”, it states, “He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember how his eyes had burned at those sounds.” (Wolff, 4) This shows the reader an insight to the characters earlier life and indicated the innocence of the character who cried at his love of words and poems. When Anders is shot, the reader is described how the bullet passes through the brain which reflects on how death is final and cannot be stopped. It’s described as, “The bullet smashed Anders’ skull and ploughed through his brain and exited behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the cerebral cortex, the corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into the thalamus.” (3) The story