46 pages • 1-hour read
Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind
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Themes
The Importance of Strong Family Bonds
Bargatze credits his parents with fostering the loving environment that allowed him to become a successful adult. Bargatze’s appreciation for his parents is clear from the first pages of Big Dumb Eyes. He reflects fondly on his childhood throughout the book, commenting, “My childhood was pure dumb funny, but that pretty much only happened because my dad got all the miserable stuff out of the way” (13). The only source of love in Bargatze’s dad’s life was Bargatze’s mom, who he met at a young age, and then, eventually, Bargatze and his two siblings when they were born. Bargatze’s dad is depicted as someone who is grateful to have found a loving family, and he would do anything to support them. Similarly, Bargatze describes his mother as “pretty much a living saint” (9). The superlative descriptions are likely exaggerated: No family or parent is perfect. Bargatze relies on his readers to know this and make their own judgments about the family portrait he presents.
When Bargatze is young, his family struggles with money, but his parents still buy Bargatze a car when he’s a teenager, pay for his first year of college, and generally support him in any way they can. It is obvious that they value their three children. However, Bargatze also makes it clear that his interests weren’t always supported. After winning the school science fair, he is excited to participate in the city-wide competition. However, his family has other plans, and they drop his project off with a note about how it works. Bargatze quickly shifts the narrative back to his pride at having won his school prize, but the episode makes it clear that he lacked academic role models.
Nevertheless, Bargatze aspires to be like his father, who was a professional clown and magician. In Bargatze’s view, though, he could never be funnier than his dad. To this day, his father sometimes opens for Bargatze’s comedy shows, illustrating just how deep their bond is. Featuring his father this way is also his way of returning the care his father gave to Bargatze in years prior. Bargatze’s comedy career can be seen as a way of continuing his father’s legacy.
The author makes it clear that aside from his parents and siblings, his wife and daughter are the main sources of motivation in his life. Much of Bargatze’s humor centers around marriage and parenthood though it is never derogatory. Rather, his stories contain an underlying sense of adoration and affection. For example, Bargatze recounts an argument he has with Laura wherein he calls her while she is out with a friend to ask her opinion on what he should eat for lunch. She hangs up on him, and he calls back to ask what she wants to watch on TV that evening. This shows that he values his wife’s opinion while making himself look silly in comparison. Bargatze also uses his young daughter as source of humor, but he celebrates rather than mocks her innocent perspectives. Taken together, these anecdotes reveal that Bargatze’s career is shaped by love of and from his family.
Finding Humor and Joy in Simplicity
Rather than relying on political critique or edginess, the comedy of Big Dumb Eyes derives from life’s simple moments. A trope used throughout the memoir is that Bargatze is, as the title suggests, simple-minded. Bargatze often draws humor from exaggerating his ignorance. He repeatedly refers to himself as “dumb,” and writes at length about how he struggled in school. Reading and writing don’t come naturally to him, even as an adult. Bargatze never laments his perceived lack of intelligence—he never expresses jealousy of others or wishes to be a smarter, more complex person. He accepts this characterization and uses his shortcomings to elicit amusement and fun. “Being dumb had its advantages” (90), Bargatze writes. He recalls meeting his wife Laura for the first time. Bargatze doesn’t have a high-level education or job to impress her with. He says, “I’d been a total idiot in front of Laura a bunch of times. But that wasn’t gonna stop me. […] I was just gonna do it more, and even bigger than before” (92). To get Laura’s attention one day, Bargatze plays a CD of Disney music at full volume in his car and sings along to it poorly. It works, and he and Laura develop a romance based on their shared enjoyment of uncomplicated silly jokes.
Aside from having an uncomplicated outlook, the author extracts joy and comedy from the stories he tells about living a humble and less-than-extravagant life. Bargatze grew up in a family with little money in the American South. He never had any luxuries when he was young and much of the comedy in the memoir relates to this fact. Bargatze tells stories about the old, malfunctioning cars he drove, the fast-food restaurants his family occasionally ate at as a treat, and even his parents having to sleep in the dining room of his childhood home. When Bargatze moved to Chicago with a friend as an adult, he was still very poor, and he faced various obstacles as a result. Bargatze writes, “Just when we started to get into a groove in our new city, we ran into someone who was not charmed at all by our Southern ways. And that someone was gigantic rats that wanted to eat us alive” (115). This line, about the horror of living in a rat-infested apartment, epitomizes how Big Dumb Eyes finds a playful and funny take on everyday situations, whether they are mundane or even troublesome.
As a child, Bargatze didn’t know any other way of life, and he was always happy. Now, as a famous and financially successful adult, the author still finds the most joy and humor in the simplest moments he shares with loved ones. In the chapter “I’m in Your Head,” Bargatze tells the story of his daughter, Harper, winning a game against her cousin during a recent Christmas family gathering. Harper ends up in her bedroom sobbing because she feels so guilty for winning. Bargatze retells the story to highlight the humor of the situation while also marveling at Harper’s compassion. In this way, Big Dumb Eyes is shows that ordinary, everyday, experiences are the most meaningful in that they reveal humanity, love, and humor.
Taking Pride in Southern Culture Despite Its Stereotypes
Nick Bargatze moved away from the American South when he was still young, but Big Dumb Eyes shows that the author’s identity and comedic voice are still rooted in his Southern upbringing. The memoir’s introduction focuses on Bargatze’s Southern accent, and it includes a few notes for readers, one of which is, “Take any word that you say, and I probably say it different. Like ‘boil’ is really ‘bowl’” (3). By starting the book this way, Bargatze indicates that the way he speaks is inseparable from who he is. He uses self-deprecating humor regarding his accent, but it’s clear that Bargatze is not genuinely ashamed of it. In fact, the opposite is true—he’s proud of where he is from. In the next chapter, Bargatze tells a story from his childhood about his father getting pulled over on his way to church under suspicion of drinking and driving. Bargatze’s dad was drinking a soft drink called Big Red which the officer mistook for alcohol. Big Red is “why [Bargatze’s] dad has diabetes” (9). This anecdote pokes fun at stereotypes around poor diets and health in the South, and it also adds to his father’s characterization in the memoir.
Being a churchgoing Christian is a marker of Southern identity that Bargatze identifies with and weaves into many of his stories. He experiences culture shock upon moving to Chicago, where he would casually ask people what church they went to. This is an acceptable question in Tennessee, but Bargatze was surprised to learn that most people living in Chicago didn’t attend church. When Chicagoans learned Bargatze is Southern, they sometimes asked him if he believed in dinosaurs (assuming he is Christian and thus didn’t believe in evolution). Bargatze never hid or betrayed his Southern roots despite being frequently stereotyped. Rather, he uses his cultural outlook as a lens to make his comedy accessible to people from different backgrounds.
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