Heavy-Set – Analysis | shortsonline

Heavy Set – Analysis

Plot

The story involves only two characters: a man named Lenny and his mother. One striking aspect of their relationship is that there does not seem to be any affection demonstrated between mother and son. The narrator refers to her as either “the woman” or “his mother”: He walked into the house, into the kitchen and did not look at his mother, this woman, and opened the refrigerator. When Lenny comes home from the disastrous party and tells her about it, the best she can manage is to say: “What a shame.” and “After all your trouble, too.” There is no attempt at so much as a hug and at the end of the conversation the narrator tells us: She had not moved so much as an inch in all the time he talked.

Bradbury cleverly foreshadows a potentially violent ending to the story by incorporating a sense of foreboding into Lenny’s character throughout the plot:

Lenny’s mother tells him how hard she tried with his dinner: “Was the dinner good tonight? I had to get special steak. I bought the asparagus fresh.” “I’m glad you liked it, I always like to have you like it.” Is she afraid of the consequences if he didn’t like it?;
After the phone call to say that many of his friends aren’t coming to the party, Lenny stands in silence thinking what to do: “Don’t stand there”, she said. “You make me nervous.” Nervous about what?;
After coming home early from the party, Lenny went into his bedroom and sat down in the dark: She waited five minutes. She always waited five minutes. He wanted her to come ask, he’d be mad if she didn’t. What would he do if she didn’t ask?

Themes: The major themes of the story are fitting in, ridicule, fear and despair.

Characters

The central character in the story is Lenny’s mother. However, her life is so closely intertwined with Lenny’s that in order to properly understand her, it is first necessary to understand him.

Lenny (The Antagonist): He (a.k.a. Heavy Set, Sammy, Atlas, Butch and Hercules) is a man of many dimensions:

His main interest is weight training, which he takes to an extreme level. He is obviously proud of his body and its power: he stopped and filled his lungs until his chest measured fifty inches and stood eyes closed, seeing himself in an invisible mirror poised and tremendous, two hundred and twenty muscled pounds, tanned by the sun, salted by the sea wind and his own sweat;
There is a suggestion that he may be mentally handicapped. This is evidenced by the way (at 30 years of age) he dresses in a mean little kid costume for the Halloween party and looks forward to playing young children’s games with his 18-20 year-old friends;
He appears to be socially repressed. He prefers to do things alone in everything from his job (he works on the high power lines all day, up in the sky, alone) to his hobbies (working out at home, surfing, building surf boards, and working on his car);
He also appears to be sexually repressed. He is not interested in associating with girls and pushes them away when they show any interest in him. Moreover, the way he encourages teenage boys at the beach to feel his biceps and admire his physique may indicate latent homosexuality: He walked golden among them;
He doesn’t handle rejection well and appears to become easily angered when things don’t go his way. He obtains temporary relief from this through strenuous physical activity, and may also use this to deal with the other stresses in his life such as loneliness and sexual frustration.

Lenny’s Mother (The Protagonist): We know little about the mother’s background, not even a first name. Here is what we do know about her:

She is trying her best to provide a good life for her mentally and socially challenged son. Although used to dealing with the peculiarities of his behavior, she finds coping with them exhausting and stressful: Sometimes when she talked to him, night after night, she looked as if she were lifting weights, too. When he walked through the rooms she looked like she was doing the walking for him. And when he sat brooding, as he often did, she looked around for something to do which might be burn the toast or overfire the steak;
She is conflicted. On one hand, as a mother she knows that Lenny should be looking for a wife and making a life of his own: Her lips moved: “Fly away.” On the other hand, she is as dependent on Lenny as he is on her. We know nothing about Lenny’s father, but there may be a hint about how their relationship ended in a concern that went through her mind while Lenny was at the Halloween party: What if, she thought, he found someone tonight, found someone down there, and just never came back, never came home. No telephone call. No letter, that was the way it could be. No word. Just go off away and never come back again. We can see in her answer to the question that she is paranoid about Lenny leaving her: No! she thought, there’s no one, no one there, no one anywhere. There’s just this place. This is the only place. But her heart was beating fast and she had to sit down.
There is a possibility that she may be suffering from some of the same social and mental issues as Lenny. The one thing they seem to have in common is lonely, empty lives. Like Lenny, his mother appears to have no friends. Her only entertainment is going to shows with Lenny on Saturday nights. She also appears to be living in a past world that may have affected Lenny’s outlook as he was growing up: she wished she could be there at the little shack out over the waves on the pier, everyone whirling about in costumes, and all the pumpkins cut each a different way and a contest for the best homemade mask or makeup job, and too much popcorn to eat.