Similarly, Anders used to be equally engaged by other people’s poetic devotion. Anders’s past dedication and emotional connection to poetry is in clear and sharp contrast to his current lack of passion. Anders had committed these poems to memory to be able to “give himself the shivers at will,” but they are now irrelevant and forgotten. When Anders was younger, he memorized “hundreds of poems,” though Wolff emphasizes that in the moment of his death, Anders does “not remember a single line” of them. More scenes from Anders’s past emerge, demonstrating his innocent enjoyment of and engagement with the world. Wolff then strengthens this comparison between father and daughter: Anders once stood “just outside his daughter's door” while she lectured her stuffed animals about their “naughtiness,” listing the “appalling punishments” they “would receive.” Like her father, the unnamed daughter once had a sense of innocence that helped her imaginatively engage with the world, in contrast to her current “sullen” behavior. Still, Wolff makes a point of mentioning how she is “now a sullen professor of economics.” In emphasizing what his daughter is like “now,” it is implied that Anders’s daughter, like her father, has lost her sense of passion. In addition to Sherry and his wife, Anders does not remember his daughter in his final moments. A clear pattern in Anders’s life begins to emerge: as time passes, his passion for others repeatedly cools to indifference and weariness. For example, Anders used to “madly” love his first girlfriend, Sherry, for her “unembarrassed carnality.” He also used to love his wife, though over time, she began to bore him. These selected characters illustrate Anders’s past emotional engagement with the world, and sometimes serve as parallel examples of people who have, like Anders, lost their innocence. When Anders is first shot, Wolff describes a list of characters from Anders’s life that he does not remember.
In the story’s final memory from Anders’s youth, however, Wolff demonstrates how nostalgia allows Anders to “still make time” to return to these lost days of innocence, even if his life is almost over.
Wolff illustrates how Anders gradually lost his innocence and his passion, suggesting that time’s passage can erode even the most energetic and dynamic of people. In contrast, Anders’s death is the final, unhappy culmination of his now joyless life.
These scenes illustrate Anders’s past emotional innocence, showing how he used to be the type of man to attend antiwar rallies, memorize poetry, and wake up laughing. When Anders is shot, various scenes from his life-both remembered and not-begin to play out in his mind.
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