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“Fat” is the first story in Raymond Carver’s collection of short stories, Will You Be Quiet Please? It is story of an unnamed woman who tells her friend Rita about her night serving an unusually fat man in her restaurant. Like in other stories by Carver, small actions and statements in “Fat” carry much more weight than they seem at first glance. On a first pass, it’s very easy to feel that nothing substantial has happened in this story, but on further analysis several deeper themes develop.