A Kind of Flying is comprised of compilation of selected short stories by Ron Carlson. The stories are mostly written in first person. Carlson writes the story in an extraordinary and sensitive way with bizarre surface happenings. The stories are filled with imaginative humorous tales with epigrammatic dialogue. In the selected four stories titled, “Bigfoot Stole My Wife,” “I Am Bigfoot,” “The Tablecloth of Turin,” and “The Chromium Hook,” describes the concept and the difference between truth and reality, and what we choose to believe and not to believe. Credibility is one of the major themes addressed in the stories.
It is also emphasized that determining between what reality is and what is not is a very difficult decision. Carlson appears to give the reader the degree of truthfulness; however, most of it is in fact not true. In the “Bigfoot Stole my Wife it is not his wife’s intention to leave him, but rather believe that she is kidnapped by big foot hairy beast man. The power of credibility is addressed in all four stories. (thesis). The biggest theme of the “Bigfoot Stole my Wife” is credibility as what people will believe in. It is the story that deals with the narrator’s extraordinary experiences.
It is about a guy, who has traumatic experiences all his life. Moving, his mom having a boyfriend, and=2 0the discovery of the boyfriends “dude” magazine all the way leading up to his wife leaving him because he is too involved in the horse races. He either stretches the truth or creates scenarios (such as bigfoot stealing his wife) so he can deal with these traumatic life experiences. Because he has been dealing with these traumatic experiences, since he was a teen through stretching of the truth, he has no credibility up through his adult hood. Moreover, it has a story about a flooding river.
He keeps asking throughout the story, whether the readers can believe on him. He claims that no one believes anything anymore, and near the end, he says the following: Now you can believe all that. 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. Believe your eyes. Your ears. Believe the small hairs onthe back of your neck. Believe all of history, and all of the versions of history, and all the predictions for the future. Believe every weather forcast. Believe in God, the afterlife, unicorns, howers on Tuesday. Everything has happened. Everything is possible. The narrator goes through his experiences until he reaches the end when he says that anything is possible, and he believes this because extraordinary things have happened to him. He tells his audience that they should believe as well because these things do happen. So, in the end, what the narrator is saying about what people believe in is this: p eople believe in strange things, to the extent that they have experienced strange things. Because the narrator has experienced strange things, he thinks that everything is possible.
And that, I believe, is the purpose of the story about the flooding river. He’s building credibility to himself and saying something about why he could believe that Big Foot took his wife. The next story is titled, “I am a Bigfoot” is connected with the story of “Bigfoot Stole my Wife,” and it has a connected theme regarding credibility as what people will believe in. Specifically, the theme of “I am bigfoot” is a metaphor for all men or woman for that matter, who are unfaithful or the “I am a Bigfoot” is a metaphor for all men or woman who desire married men or woman.
Bigfoot is a metaphor for people who want things that they cannot have, but are very confident that they will have those things. Moreover, he uses the idea of what people will believe as a theme by using credible historical lines, to make it seem believable, such as: “Jacquelin Onassis,” and using real places for instance, “Rockefeller center. ” In fact, it states on the story regarding Jacquelin Onassis, “Hey, I’m not dead, and I only saw Jacquelin Onassis once, at about four hundred yards. She was on a horse” (84).
Furthermore, Carlson is trying to use Bigfoot as a metaphor by using him as a well traveled man, and use to talk about the women, and how they flock to him; thus, it is not him that attracts them. In fact, according to the story he states, “I know my powers I use my powers and when I call a woman she comes” (85). Also, the author almost makes the reader believe that they are “Bigfoot. ” Hence, the idea of what people will believe is the revolving main theme of the story. The theme of the “Tablecloth of Turin,” has to deal with faith, and it can relate in many concepts in religion to what is seen is unseen, and what is unseen is seen.
Basically, faith means believing in something without truth. Nonetheless, it is not necessarily without truth, but without “proof. ” The tablecloth is used as an example of how people are willing to trust people, even without proof. There are a few thousand religions in the world, and they all believe different things. Now, while each has its core beliefs, there is not necessarily scientific proof for any of them. Rather, people learn them and are told to “trust” in these ideas to have faith. This concept of “faith” can be exemplified by comin g up the idea of trust.
It is the idea about “trust no one. ” It says in the beginning by a guy named Leonard Christofferson “… trust nothing, nobody”. Then, he goes on about the tablecloth that was supposedly at the Last Supper. So, maybe he wanted to see if they actually believed him even though he already said basically not to trust anyone. Hence, this is an example of why we shouldn’t necessarily trust anyone, and he is using religion to show that. Also, on how people are willing to “look past” proof if it coincides with their belief.
For example, Christians don’t necessarily have “proof” that Christ is the Messiah. But, since they have faith that He is, they’re willing to overlook the fact that there is no guarantee, and while followers of other religions don’t view Christ as the messiah. In life, everyone believes in certain things and not to others, and this affects the stories we tell to others. We believe certain things based on our unique past life experiences. Both learned and experienced. These past life experiences define what we perceive as reality through any one or all of our senses.
