Andre Dubus' the Fat Girl

Andre Dubus's "The Fat Girl"

Louise, the protagonist in Andre Dubus's short story "The Fat Girl," has a furtive love affair with food. Throughout the story, Dubus describes this affair using the underpinnings of a real sexual relationship. It is the purpose of this paper to explore instances where Dubus's uses sexual activity/romance and food/eating imagery to convey Louise's secret love affair with food.

The story opens up with a rather explicit scene, a boy rape-kissing Louise at a BBQ, "Her name was Louise. Once when she was sixteen a boy kissed her at a barbecue; he was drunk and he jammed his tongue into her mouth and ran his hands up and down her hips." This scene sets up a key dramatic element of the story, the fact that Louise is a corpulent, sex-starved girl for must of her life. Her first encounter (and...
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