What Is The Theme Of 'Once In Awhile Things Slip'?

“Once in awhile things slip” this is the statement said by the butcher in death of a pig. In the story he spent several day and nights in mid-September tending to an ailing pig. In depth he talked about how he could have died, and the pig could have lived he felt like he should have accounted for the stretch of time and that if he died and the pig lived no one would have been left to do the accounting? In a way he treated the pig like a child tending to its sickness, and getting sick in the process. As he stated how if he were in better health he would have remembered the days and nights he spent more sharply.

Deeper in the story we see that he begins to talk in more detail such as how when they slid the pig’s body into the grave they were both shaken to the core, he said and I quote “The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig.” This statement shows how he thought of the pig, for he did not think of as food or meat but as a pig an animal who just wanted to live. It was a tragedy not because of the loss of food but because of the loss of an animal in his care. As the farmer says in the
He talks about how the ruse of baby pigs were not going to eat because the big pig was sick. He says how his spirits declined and so did the pigs because the medicine had no effect. He says that “From then until the time of his death I held the pig steadily in the bowl of my mind; the task of trying to deliver him from his misery became a strong obsession. His suffering soon became the embodiment of all earthly wretchedness.” as the pig did die in the end the farmer and his mindset were changed as he developed a feeling of grief at the end knowing he lost something he took so hard to take care