Bullet in the Brain

The final action of Anders that results in his death is his mimicking the man with the pistol. The masked man said “Capiche” and Anders couldn’t help himself from laughing. After reading what happens after Anders is shot, we see that he has done this type of thing before. When Coyle’s cousin from Mississippi said the words “they is,” Anders found it unexpected and repeated it to himself over and over when he went out on the field. This small repetition of the past in the last moment of Anders life may have triggered the very distant memory of the “summer afternoon some forty years past.” Anders might have saved his own life if he had just kept quiet like the man told him to be. But even as a child, Anders could not keep his thoughts completely silent. He repeated the funny words Coyle’s cousin said and as an adult, his career was based on making his opinion known to other people. He did this without a care of what others would feel and it is evidence of his emotionally destructive behavior.

His destructive behavior is also expressed in the third line when he is described as having a “murderous temper.” And later, in the third paragraph, Anders is said to have “towering hatred” that was transferred from the teller to the “presumptuous crybaby in front of him.” He also gives a blunt, sarcastic reply to the “crybaby.” It is this same bluntness and Anders’s need to get his opinion out in the open that brings about the bullet in his brain.