family dysfunction

As the reader, we are given a look into the core issues Anders has repressed and never dealt with. However, these issues have defined him for the entirety of his life. The element I find interesting to explore in Bullet in the Brain is the legacy of family dysfunction.

I believe his dying mother's statement that she should have stabbed her husband in his sleep coupled with the Anders deliberately crashing his ffather's car into a tree show a sad family history. I would guess that he often harbored immense hatred toward his father, yet because of his mother's influence at least tried to find some sort of decency in human nature. Of course we do not know when his mother died, yet if it was earlier in his adult life it may partly explain his change into a cynnical, critical man.

One could also assume that, if his mother did infact die early in his life, Anders was left seeking someone like his mother... or maybe the exact opposite? I'm not sure, but I believe his unending boredom stems from always searching for something new and exciting to keep his mind off of painful memories. When his wife became too predictable, he leaves. There could even be a debilitating fear of abandonment that forces Anders to be the first to shut people out before they can hurt him by leaving.

Then we jump to the pieces of information about his daughter. The memory of standing outside his daughter's room, listening to her lecture and describe an "appalling" punishment to her bear seems to be more than just a memory of his daughter. This could very well be an exact reflection of Anders disciplining his daughter. Maybe this repressed memory brought pain and self-doubt concerning the way he treated his daughter; even going so far as to say he might have realized he was continuing to treat his family the way his father had treated his mother and him. And yet his daughter ends up just as excited about her job as a professor as Anders is about his job.

Family dysfunction is often a long legacy that can be traced far into our family's history then back again to the present. It is so very powerful and usually defines the family members in a negative way, if they do not consciously work to fix the negative behaviors and thoughts. I believe Anders became the cynnical, critical, bored man he ended up being largely because of his family dysfunction. So, at the time of death and flashing memories before his eyes, of course he remembered the one happy memory as a child.