Fat By Raymond Carver Analysis

In Noah Mckenzie 's review of the short story Fat by Raymond Carver. He argues that many of the “small actions” in the story and “ statements mean a lot.” He claims that it’s a straightforward story to read and get no meaning out of it the first time. However, it is necessary to reread the story more than once to uncover things that weren’t there the first time. The author believes that carvers story has a deeper meaning and that it can only be found by reading the story more than once. The thing that I found very interesting that pulled me towards this review was the fact that he had mentioned psychology and how it was hard to notice it throughout the story. The evidence that he had used to show that psychology was an element in this story

And after, I decided to look closely at the rape scene, and I realized that the rape scene is connected to the fat man’s ordering scene. I can now see why Carver placed the rape scene in the end and how it relates to the fat man’s struggle to control the amount he eats. I decided to look through the story using phenomenology as a lense, and it helped me discover things I hadn’t before. A phenomenologist would say “What plot patterns do we see in the story?, or What was the point of the entire story?” I realized many patterns throughout the story and connected them. I connected the rape scene with the scene in which the narrator was taking the fat mans order. And discovered how closely it relates to each other. In both scenes, the characters are both struggling to have control over their actions, and we see this when the man apologizes for ordering too much food. The scene where the narrator is getting forced into sexual intercourse, she says “ I turn on my back and relax some, though it is against my will,” her action in this scene proves how she has no control of the situation that she is in. The main point of why the author decided to place these two scenes in the story is to show control. And how it is missing throughout these two scenes. The fat man has no control over the amount of food he eats while the narrator has no control over the scene in which she gets raped. The thing that ties these two scenes together is the fact that they relate to each other. The rape scene is something that comes after the fat man 's order scene, but the rape scene relates back to the fat man 's order. The fat man 's order is somewhat of a representation of the struggle the woman has when facing the rape. She is unwillingly getting forced into having sexual intercourse, yet she believes she has no control at all to get herself out of it. The topic of control is something that the