Fat Ham

Content Warning: The source text and this guide include references to assault, murder, racism, and anti-gay bias. In addition, the source text uses offensive terms for mental health conditions, replicated in this guide only in quotes.

“PAP. We supposed to be one beating heart. You and me. You my son! You my namesake!

JUICY. It’s amazing what fathers think they own of their sons just cause we share a name.”

Pap expects loyalty from Juicy merely because they are related by blood. Juicy, however, suggests that Pap is not deserving of such allegiance. He will spend much of the play establishing the ways in which he is unlike his father. Pap, like Rev, is a foil for Juicy. Both older men are aggressive and cruel, while Juicy is sensitive and introspective. The above quote uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as.” In this case, Pap uses the image of “one beating heart” to evoke the unity and loyalty he expects from Juicy.

“JUICY. Don’t worry about him. He’s harmless. Fathers and sons. I can get dark. You know. When the chemistry ain’t right. When the father is too heavy and the son is too light. When the father thinks the son is too light. When the son is too heavy.”

This passage references specific lines in Hamlet that speak of the sun. In Hamlet, the prince engages in word play on “sun” and “son” to speak of his father’s influence upon him. Here, Juicy evokes similar wordplay with “heavy” and “light.”

“JUICY. He can’t pound on me anymore. He locked up for eternity. He doesn’t seem to be in Hell. Which makes me contemplate the afterlife and purgatory and angels and my own mortality and what have you. He too evil to be in Heaven. What do you do when God don’t want you and the devil won’t have you.”

Juicy is not fearful of Pap because, as a ghost, Pap can no longer physically harm him. Juicy contemplates the state of Pap’s soul, certain that, because of the abuse he committed when alive, he cannot be in a pleasant afterlife.