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“‘Fuck with me again, you're history. Capiche?’
Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, ‘I'm
sorry, I'm sorry,’ then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said, ‘Capiche—oh, God, capiche,’ and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.”
This quote comprises the final exchange between Anders and the robber with the pistol before the robber shoots and kills him. Anders is sardonically amused by the robber’s clichéd manner of speaking, and cannot stop himself from mocking him—in spite of the clear danger the robber poses. Anders’s fate is indicative of the dangers of cynicism; in his near-compulsive propensity to criticize others, he ultimately brings about his own probably death, soundly punished for his cynicism.
“He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.”
After Anders is shot, the narrator lists a series of events that Anders does not reflect on during his final moments. This quote makes up one of those examples. Here, the reader learns that Anders at some point lost his passion for literature because he became too jaded and too judgmental to enjoy it; now, he sees books and merely things to criticize. Anders’s pitiful existence and his avoidable end is a cautionary tale about the all-consuming nature of cynicism.
