Empire Falls

Weight, both physical and moral, plays a significant role in the Roby family. Miles is teasingly nicknamed “Big Boy” (28) by Walt Comeau, his wife’s new lover. Janine is obsessed with her weight, having lost more than fifty pounds, but is bothered by Walt’s tendency to play a “constant public guessing game about her weight” (68). This makes her even more self-conscious about her weight, and she exercises constant vigilance over her food intake; this, in turn, has an impact on Tick, “a rail-thin sophomore” in high school (20) who picks listlessly at her food. Tick is often weighed down, hunched over by her heavy backpack—and, metaphorically, by the heaviness of her thoughts since her parents’ decision to divorce.

When Miles catches Janine “sneaking a scallop off Tick’s plate,” he offers to get Janine her own plate of food. Janine immediately goes on the defensive, declaring, “I’m not going to be fat again, not ever” (109). She implies that Miles has been responsible for her excess weight—he runs a restaurant, after all—and claims that she has regained “control of my own body” (109), declaring her independence from him. Her scavenging from Tick’s plate, though, also symbolizes the ways in which Janine robs Tick of her own self-worth, so bound up is it in food.