Themes and message

Discrimination

The main theme in “Fat” by Raymond Carver is that of discrimination. Discrimination refers to the fact that some people are treated differently on the grounds of race, sex, weight, etc.

The narrator’s co-workers refer to the overweight customer as “fatty” (p. 3, l. 35), “old tub-of-guts” (p. 5, l. 24), “fat man from the circus” (p. 7, l. 39), and “some fatty” (p. 6, l. 23). They define the man solely in terms of his weight and mock him for it. Even though they are not harassing him face-to-face, we can conclude that the man is acutely aware of being judged and stared at, since he is unwilling to take off his coat, even though he is warm (p. 5, ll. 4-10), he is apologetic about eating too much (p. 4, ll. 32-33), and constantly justifies his appetite by stating that he is hungry, but “we have not always eaten like this” (p. 6, l. 12). The fact that the man is from out of town can also suggest the fact that he has decided to go to a place where no one knows him so he can eat as much as he wants and shake off a little of the social pr...