When We Talk About Love Analysis

Love is a word that has various meanings according to people’s interpretations. Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” focuses on the variations of love according to four friends. Each friend contributes their own input as to what love is as they sit around the table drinking gin. As they become more intoxicated, their ideas as to what love is becomes muddled, and they even begin to question their own ideas of the meaning of love. So, what is love? Each character presents their own idea of what is love by discussing their previous relationships and through their dialogue with their current partners.

The first person who discusses the idea of love is Mel, the heart surgeon. He was previously married, and

now he is currently married to his wife, Terri. He begins the conversation about love and implies that love fades away and reappears. During his rant about the idea of love, he says, “If something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one…would grieve for a while…but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough” (Carver 145). This example closely relates to his own life because he claimed there was once “a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself,” (Carver 144) but eventually their love faded, and now he cannot stand the sight of her. Now, he is married to Terri, who he claims he loves so much, but throughout the night, he flirts with Laura. In fact, Mel says, “Laura, if I didn’t have Terri and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I’d fall in love with you” (Carver 151). Mel shows that he can fall in love as easily as he can fall out of love. He’s not committed to his relationships which shows that his love changes overtime and he becomes preoccupied with another love. Mel’s love clearly bounces from one person to another, and shows that love can die and be replaced by newfound love.

Unlike Mel’s pessimistic view of love, his wife, Terri, has a different idea as to what love is. Before her relationship with Mel, she was involved in an abusive relationship with a man named Ed who “loved her so much he tried to kill her” (Carver 138). Even though he abused her, Terri was certain that Ed loved her because he had a love for her that he was willing to die for. In fact, he drank rat poison after she left him, and then committed suicide by shooting himself (Carver 140). Ed clearly couldn’t live without Terri once she left him, and she was torn once he died. Terri clearly still loved him because she “wanted to go in and sit with him when she found out about [his suicide]” (Carver 142). After her relationship with Ed, she began another abusive relationship with Mel. Even though he doesn’t physically abuse her, he verbally abuses her by yelling at her. In one case, Terri nicely asked him to stop acting like he’s drunk and he responds by saying, “Just shut up for once in your life” (Carver 146). His language becomes worse with her as he becomes more intoxicated. For instance, when Terri corrects Mel, he says “what the fuck’s the difference? You knew what I meant anyway” (Carver 149). Terri responds to each of his degrading remarks with kindness, which shows she settles for an abusive type of love. She has only loved people who abuse her, so it is the only type of love she knows.

While Mel and Terri explained what love is to them, Nick and his new wife, Laura, have a similar view of love. As Terri puts it, the couple is “still on the honeymoon” (Carver 143) which classifies their love as a new, young love. Nick and Laura are very affectionate throughout the night and seem genuinely happy, unlike Mel and Terri. Mel and Terri clearly have some issues in their relationship due to their constant bickering, but Nick and Laura are content being in each other’s presence. In fact, Nick describes his love for Laura when he states, “In addition to being in love, we like each other and we enjoy one another’s company” (Carver 141). This demonstrates a new love because the relationship not only has a romantic aspect to it, but it has a friendship aspect. The couple never explicitly say what love is for them, but their constant smiling and hand-holding demonstrate that their love is blissful and perfect. Therefore, while Mel and Terri have their own views of love, Nick and Laura share the belief that they are the lucky ones and found the best kind of love.

After seeing each character’s definition of love, none of their love compares to the love of the old couple that Mel talks about.

Mel was called to the hospital after the old couple suffered injuries from a car accident. After suffering multiple injuries, the couple had “casts and bandages, head to foot,” (Carver 151) so they had eye, nose and mouth holes cut out for them. Even though both the old man and woman were going to survive their injuries, the old man went through a depression. Mel could not comprehend why he was sad, so he asked the old man to which he replied that, “he couldn’t see [his wife] through his eye-holes” (Carver 151). Mel goes on to say, “the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife” (Carver 151). These lines indicate that the old couple experience true love for each other. The tiniest bit of affection is shown through the old man’s torment of not being able to see his wife’s eyes. Regardless of his own health and well-being, he wanted to be free of the casts to simply gaze upon his wife. So, is this true love? This idea of true love shows that not only the physical presence is what satisfies him, but the slightest sight of her makes him happy. True love is much deeper than the what any of the characters experienced in their

lives.

By the end of the short story, the characters discover that love is undefinable. Raymond Carver alludes to this discovery through the symbol of light and darkness. When they all talk about love in the beginning of the story, they are all in good spirits and Nick observes outside. He describes the daylight by saying, “The afternoon sun was like a presence in this room, the spacious light of ease and generosity” (Carver 144). Each character seems to be happy with their partners as Terri and Mel declare their love for each other, and Nick always made an effort to touch the “back of Laura’s hand” (Carver 139). However, as everyone becomes increasingly intoxicated, Mel decides to ramble about his tumultuous past with his ex-wife and an accident regarding an old married couple. As he delved into each tale, the “sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner,” (Carver 150) meaning that the hopefulness and joy of love was fading out of the room. Through these tales, each character learns that their ideas of what love is might be wrong, which ultimately drains the light out of the room. Before, they all had their beliefs as to what love is and were content by the idea. However, once they became aware of the various types of love, they suddenly became aware that they might not know what love is. The darkness in the end symbolizes that love is unknown to them all; therefore, as each character sits in the dark, Nick can “hear everyone’s heart” (Carver 154) which indicates they are all fearful and nervous of not knowing true love.

Carver’s focus on love in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” shows how important the idea of love is to his life. He is even drawn to writing about love in his poems, “Late Fragment” and “Gravy.” “Late Fragment” starts with the question, “And did you get what /

you wanted from this life, even so?” (Carver 1-2) Carver says he did, and it was to “call myself beloved, to feel myself / beloved on the earth” (5-6). Carver makes it known that being loved is what mattered to him most. Being able to say he was loved made him feel like his life had meaning. While each character in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” dealt with the complications of love, they were all able to share how great love made them felt at one point in each of their lives. While Carver shows the power of love and its importance, he also shows how love can change people in his poem, “Gravy.” Carver’s life before he met his second wife, Tess Gallagher, was “going / nowhere but down” (Carver 6-7). However, once he found love in Tess, his life became, “Gravy, these past ten years” (Carver 2). He was able to quit his addiction to alcohol and devote the rest of his life to writing because of love. He even died ten years later than was expected because of the motivations of love. Through Carver’s work, readers can see the powerful nature of love and its ability to change people in either the best or the worst ways.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” The debatable topic of love is what drew my interest to the short story. Unlike most stories about love, Carver brought up different kinds of love that people experience and made a point that love comes in different forms. Everyone strives to attain true love, but instead, we are left with the multiple variations of love. At the end of the story, the readers are left to determine the definition of love. In addition, I liked how the readers are able to relate to each character and views of love. For example, I can understand Mel’s definition as to what love is defined as. He claims that “we’re just beginners at love,” (Carver 144) and we all have a long way to reaching true love. We all think we know what love is, but we never really know until we experience different types of love. Since everyone experiences their own types of love, according to the story, is true love based on our interpretations of it? Are there several definitions for true love?