Talk About Love

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In his story “What We Talk About When We talk About Love,” Raymond Carver expresses his idea of love through his characters and storyline. After reading this story, I am able to connect a type of love with each individual character in the story. Love is taken and given in many different ways, such as affection, gifts, affirmation, or physical time. Carver uses alcohol in his story to spark the conversation about love and also end the conversation about love. The sun is also used to symbolize the coming and going of happiness and love throughout the story. There are three types of love that can be drawn from this story: cynical love, spiritual love, unconditional love, and young love. The title of the story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” gives us great insight on what the subject of the story will mostly be. By looking at the title, we can see that not only are we talking about what it means to love in general, but also what the author truly believes the meaning of love is. Raymond Carver defines different degrees of various forms of love through symbolism in the characters and plot of the story.
As I began to read the story, I noticed the importance of the couples drinking the gin and the presence of sun. In their discussion about love, Mel, Terri, Laura, and Nick consume large amounts of alcohol. Their confusion becomes even greater as they consume more and more alcohol, which makes it even more difficult for them to define what love is. As the conversation grows more and more heated, it also becomes more and more incoherent and blurry. Drinking also serves as a ritual in this story. The friends have joined together to have a good time and have an open discussion about love, as well as share their personal exper...

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...s love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were” (Carver 853).
Laura and Nick are almost positive that they know what the true meaning of love is. They do not specifically define love, however, they express it through holding hands and smiling at each other. Each couple has their own reasons to believe that they have loved, yet they cannot clearly express why. The dialogue that occurs between Laura, Nick, Mel and Terri reveal a lot about their perception on love. For example, the way the characters interact with each other not only helps the reader to understand the author’s purpose of the essay, but also suggests that there be a relation between the story and intellectual, spiritual, and sensual love.

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