Graphics and Mechanics of "The Brain Drawing the Bullet"
Another graphical component of the story that is interesting is the use of (or lack thereof) color. As mentioned previously, color can be used to highlight themes that authors want to show. In this story, only three colors are present: black, white, and red. The page that the story is written on is white, while all of the text is black. In addition to being the traditional duo of text colors, black and white are allusions to the idiom "seeing things in black and white" which means that there is a clear right and wrong. The idiom symbolizes the narrator's attempt to convince the reader that he has done nothing wrong and that he is clearly in the right while being unfairly criminalized by society. The only other color present in the story is red which is only shown in the arrows that the reader has to click to progress the story. The red arrow is not only a mechanism to progress the story, but it symbolizes an important aspect of the story through mechanics and graphics. Every time that the reader clicks the arrow, the story progresses and new information is added to the editorial. However, another affect of clicking the arrow is that previous information in the editorial changes. As a result, the arrow symbolizes an attempt of the narrator to recall the murder and change details about it to prove his innocence. With each click of the arrow, the narrator, and therefore the reader, go through another instance of the murder in which the narrator gradually changes from the perpetrator to the victim. This is only further symbolized by the red color of the arrow signifying the blood that was spilled when Joan was killed. Effectively, each time the red arrow is clicked, the "brain draws the bullet" again meaning that the murder is replayed in the narrator's head with different details surrounding the situation that make the narrator seem innocent and wrongly viewed by society.