Bullet in the Brain

1. How has Anders’s profession slowly poisoned his life?

A) He cannot distinguish fantasy from reality.

B) He responds to everything critically rather than simply appreciating or enjoying things.

C) He drives people away by comparing them to fictional characters.

D) He prefers books to real people and things.

2. How does Anders respond when the woman in front of him at the bank complains about the teller closing her position?

A) He redirects his own hatred of the teller at the woman.

B) He ignores her completely and looks at the ceiling.

C) He realizes that his feelings of anger toward the teller were exaggerated.

D) He does not have a chance to respond because he sees the robbers enter the bank.

3. What is the only thing about the robbery that really surprises Anders?

A) That he is not afraid when he always imagined he would be.

B) That the criminals do not bother to wear masks.

C) That one of the criminals has breath that smells like ammonia.

D) That everything seems to happen in slow motion.

4. Which choice best characterizes Anders’s attitude during the robbery?

A) He is more fascinated than frightened by what is going on.

B) He offers commentary as though he were watching a performance.

C) He does not believe the criminals have bad intentions.

D) He realizes he is about to die and resigns himself to it.

5. Why does Anders ridicule the criminals?

A) They frighten the lazy teller and the two chatty women.

B) Their movements are stiff and unnatural.

C) They wave guns around, trying to look tough.

D) They use cliché language from old-time gangster movies.

Discussion suggestion: How does Wolff use a metafictional approach to highlight the challenges of creating an interesting, suspenseful story? Which parts of the story are surprising and which are predictable? Why and how are predictability or unpredictability important to the story? Why is it significant that Wolff mentions Hemingway’s story “The Killers”? Does Wolff manage to surprise us in the story? If so, how does he achieve this?

6. Why does the criminal put his gun under Anders’s chin and force him to look up at the ceiling?

A) He wants Anders to stop talking.

B) He doesn’t want Anders to be able to identify him or his partner.

C) He doesn’t like Anders staring at him.

D) He shows Anders the damage he could do if he shoots him.

7. The mural on the ceiling depicts scenes from mythology. What does Anders think about as he studies the scenes?

A) the cheesy style with which the scenes were painted

B) that every good story has already been told

C) how much he loved learning Greek in school

D) the simple beauty of the ceiling, which he hadn’t noticed before

8. When Anders is shot, the narrator reveals several things that Anders does not remember in his final moments. What can we assume about Anders’s adult life from these memories?

A) He never loved anyone.

B) His self-importance kept him from forming relationships.

C) Every relationship eventually disappointed him.

D) No one ever returned his feelings of love.

9. How does Wolff explain the peculiar effect of “brain time”?

A) Anders’s brain imagines that the bullet is fired in the future.

B) Anders is already dead, but his brain doesn’t realize it yet.

C) Anders’s brain is able to recall every moment of his life simultaneously.

D) The bullet is moving more slowly than the neural impulses of Anders’s brain.

10. Anders’s final memory begins with these words: “Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects…” What literary device does Wolff use here to immediately set the memory apart from the rest of the story?

A) imagery

B) personification

C) connotation

D) poetry

Discussion Suggestion: This question can be used to explore how Wolff’s writing style changes when he describes Anders’s final memory. What is the effect of these stylistic changes? How does the language of these final paragraphs contrast with the earlier parts of the story, and how does that contrast draw attention to some of the story’s main ideas? What does the writing style at the end suggest about the boy Anders was as opposed to the man he becomes?

11. In the memory, why does Anders want to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat “Short’s the best position they is”?

A) He wants to rag on the boy about his grammar.

B) The unexpectedness of the words enchants him.

C) He wants to make sure he heard him right.

D) He wants the other boys to notice the mistake, too.

12. Which shift in perspective distinguishes the final memory from the rest of the story?

A) It is the only part written in first person.

B) It is the only part in which the narrator’s point of view is limited.

C) It is the only part written in past tense.

D) It is the only part written in present tense.

Discussion suggestion: This question can be used (along with #9) to explore the ways in which the final memory is transformative and redemptive. How do the introduction of present tense and the magical notion of “brain time” suggest that this final memory is more important, more lasting, than any of Anders’s failures of shortcomings?