Language

Style of writing

The style of language in the short story “Fat” by Raymond Carver is informal, casual and minimalistic, conveying a strong impression of realism. As the story is told by the narrator to her friend, Rita, the language closely resembles spoken speech.

There are a lot of instances of direct speech, such as “Not at all, I say. Of course not, I say. Take your time, I say.” (p. 5, l. 31). However, no quotation marks for the dialogue are used, which adds to the impression that the narrator is recounting her experience from memory. This gives the impression that the narrator is reporting everything exactly as it happened and highlighting the impression of a conversation between the narrator and a listener. The same impression is conveyed by the fact that the narrator addresses her listener Rita by name in a couple of instances, to emphasize a point she wants to make, for instance about the man’s girth: “Rita, he was big, I mean big” (p. 3, l. 19), and about the size of his fingers: “God, Rita, but those were fingers.” (p. 3, l. 29)

Rita interferes and includes her own opinion a couple of times during the narration: “He’s not the kind of person you’d forget, Rita puts in with a snicker.” (p. 4, ll. 22-23). This also happens towards the end, during a key moment in the narrati...