Discussion – Drawing Conclusions from Available Facts

 

e following is an excerpt from the story “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff:

…Anders saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same direction. And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. “Keep your big mouth shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word. “One of you tellers hits the alarm, you’re all dead meat. Got it?”
          The tellers nodded.
          “Oh, bravo,” Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front of him. “Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.”

For your initial posting, after reading the excerpt above, answer the following questions:

• What is going on in this scene?
• What will happen to Anders if he continues to criticize the robbers?
• What are ideas and facts are you basing this on?