CONVOVATORIA DE EXAMEN: ENERO 2007

ASIGNATURA OPTATIVA DE 1er CICLO:

EL RELATO CORTO EN LENGUA INGLESA

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FIRST NAME __________________
DNI ___________________
SURNAMES

TOBIAS WOLFFS STORY, BULLET IN THE BRAIN (1995)

1. Discuss Wolffs techniques in revealing character in Bullet
in the Brain. How does he give us a sense of his characters?
Be specific.

2. Analyse how the writer controls the temporal structure of

the story (i.e. creation of scenes, time-frames, etc.)

3. Comment on the strengths of the third-person narrative

with regard to this particular piece. Is it the most effective
way of telling this story? Give reasons.

4. Tobias Wolffs stories do not depend on a detailed

description of a particular location for their effectiveness. In
Bullet in the Brain there is only one descriptive passage
near the middle section of the story in which Anders describes
in detail the ceiling of the bank. What does the passage
suggest to you? For what purpose does Wolff include the
passage in the story?

5. How would this passage be different if it were narrated via

first-person point of view?
It is worth noting what Ambers did not remember, given what he did
remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had
most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him her
unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his
unit, which she called Mr. Mole, as in, Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to
play, and Lets hide Mr. Mole! Anders did not remember his wife, whom
he had also loved before she exhausted him with her predictability, or his
daughter, now a sullen professor of economics at Dartmouth. He did not
remember standing just outside his daughters door as she lectured her
bear about his naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishments
Paws would receive unless he changed his ways. He did not remember a
single line of the hundreds of poems he had committed to memory in his
youth so that he could give himself the shivers at will not Silent, upon a
peak in Darien, or My God, I heard this day, or All my pretty ones? Did
you say all? O hell-kite! All? None of these did he remember; not one.

Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his father, I should
have stabbed him in his sleep.

6. At a recent creative writing seminar, a writer observed the

following: There are times when the first person is necessary
for observing others (not the protagonist) in a voice that
simultaneously creates a character (usually the protagonist)
and there are times when the first person is necessary for
observing the protagonist in a voice that is not the characters
but the storys. Apply this statement to such stories as
Olsens I Stand Here Ironing and Updikes A & P.