Raymond Carver Notes to Study

Fat by Raymond Carver
This story illustrates my own confusion about theme and plot. The physical actions of taking his order and bringing him his food elicit information in the story which I may be confusing with plot. For example: She brings him his soup and he has completely finished his large salad and two slices of bread. So we learn he eats a lot of food and quickly (which is why he is fat). As she moves between table and kitchen our storyteller defends the fat man to her colleagues. This shows us that she feels sympathy and warmly towards the fat man. So the question I have is whether plot is the physical action of bringing food (which moves the story forward) or the interspersed actions of defending the man, sharing her own inability to gain weight that occurs because she needs to serve the food. Or is every action in this story part of the plot? Clearly, the woman's reference to being fat may be suggesting pregnancy, as she feels fat during sex and then immediately intuits that her life is going to change.

The story climax seems to be when she confesses she can't gain weight. That is the point at which the story shifts from being about a fat man to being about our protagonist. Each Carver story seems to be a moment in time without actions. But he truly takes the every day and wrings meaning or poignancy from it. I'm still not sure which.

In the opening story of the Raymond Carver short story collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please, we have Fat and the theme of choice, control and obesity. Narrated in the first person by an unnamed woman the story begins with the reader being told of a conversation that the narrator had with her friend Rita. The narrator is a waitress and she is telling Rita about an obese man who came into her diner one day. The first thing the narrator noticed about the man was his long, thick, creamy fingers. This image of the fingers is important because the narrator, on several occasions, uses the man’s fingers to describe his physical appearance to Rita. Later in the story fingers are used again to describe the physical shape of the narrator.
The diner is busy and the narrator is waiting on the man. On four separate occasions, as the narrator is serving the man, her work colleague’s comment on his size. The first to do so is Margo, who asks the narrator who her fat friend is. Then Leander comments on how fat the man is, but on this occasion the narrator defends the man and tells Leander to shut up. Then Harriet calls the man old tub-of-guts and just as the man is finishing his dinner Rudy, the cook and boyfriend of the narrator, comments on the size of the man.
Throughout serving the man the narrator is the only one who shows patience and kindness to him, even though she knows that he is eating too much food (three baskets of bread before the main course). She is particularly kind to him (not only in talking but in the size of the servings) when everyone else has left the diner and he is the only customer left. He apologises to the narrator for keeping her back so long, but she tells him that it’s okay. Several times in the story the narrator refers to the puffing sound that the man makes, a sign to the reader that because of his weight the man has problems breathing. Another interesting point is that when the man refers to himself he does not say I, rather he says we, as if he is eating for two. As he is eating his dinner the man suggests to the narrator that because it is too warm, he might take his coat off. Later the narrator looks at the man and realises that he never took his coat off, perhaps he feels embarrassed about showing his size. When the narrator serves the man his dessert he tells her that he has not always eaten so much food. And again referring to himself as ‘we’ he tells her that now he has no choice, that he must eat this way.
After he has finished his dinner the man leaves the restaurant and the narrator goes home with Rudy. While at home and making Rudy a coffee the narrator holds her middle and thinks about what it would be like to have children as obese as the man in the diner. After she brings Rudy out the coffee he tells the narrator about two boys he knew when he was a kid. They were both overweight and one was called Fat and the other called Wobbly. He tells the narrator that he wishes he had a photograph of the two of them. Throughout Rudy telling the narrator about the two boys the reader is aware that he is making fun of them, just like he did the man in the diner.
After hearing Rudy’s story the narrator goes to bed. Rudy finishes off his coffee and follows her to the bedroom. As he gets into bed he climbs on top of the narrator and starts to have sex. Against her will the narrator has sex with Rudy but imagines that she is fat and that she cannot feel Rudy on top of her, as if he didn’t exist. This is important because it is the first sense of detachment that the reader gets between Rudy and the narrator. Carver ends Fat with the narrator finishing telling her story to Rita and looking at her ‘dainty’ fingers (again physical description of the narrator). Despite not being aware of the significance of the story she has told Rita the narrator does know that her life will change. Though the reader is never directly advised by Carver as to what that change may be, it is most likely that the narrator will decide to leave Rudy realising that she has a choice unlike the man in the diner. Through the man in the diner and the story Rudy tells her of the two boys, she has seen through Rudy and does not like what she has seen.