The Stories by Ron Carlson - Essay Example

In the story, he accuses Bigfoot of stealing his wife. This story is a satire on credulity. The wife of the narrator gives him a warning that one day when he returns home she would be gone. Unfortunately, when the day arrived, he found his wife missing, he couldn’t believe that she had taken off on her own. He was met with a “hairy odor” from within the empty house and was immediately convinced that she had been abducted by Bigfoot. The main themes in Ron Carlson’s, “Bigfoot stole my wife” are fear and belief. The wife seems to always warn him of her sudden disappearance and the narrator always seems to predict an impending fear within himself.

He always forces himself to believe whatever anyone else tells him because he does not have the intelligence nor fortitude to doubt what others say. This belief is clearly seen in the following sentences. "People are always saying: don’t believe everything you read or everything you hear. And I’m here to tell you. Believe it. Everything. Everything you read. Everything you hear" (p. 90). The stories by Ron Carlson seem crazy and improbable but yet come across as authentic. One of the main themes in “I am Bigfoot”, the story that followed “Bigfoot stole my wife” is the human desire to procreate.

Carlson’s intention was not to disseminate sensationalism or the occult, but his stories deal with credible human emotions. The following lines portray this fact – “At present, I am watching your wife. That’s why I am here tonight. To tell you, fairly, man to man, I suppose, I am watching your wife and I know for a fact, that when I call, she’ll come" (p. 93) The irony of the situation is that the reader pretty well knows, who Bigfoot is. He is not the mythical hairy beast on the tabloid pages, but just the haunting desire of women, yearning for a better life by freeing themselves from a marriage that is dull and unfulfilling.

The truth that is finally exposed is the expression and desire of human feelings and not a hairy beast spoken of in the story.