What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Love?
In Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” two married couples sit around a coffee table, drink gin, and ponder what love is. The dominant speaker throughout the story is a cardiologist named Mel. Mel wonders if his wife Terri’s first partner Ed actually loved her. Mel also wonders how he could possibly say he loves Terri and yet have felt the same thing with his first wife whom he now deplores. The interactions between him and the other people are interesting because it appeared to me that what they talked about when they talked about love was not love at all.
Ed is the one character that stuck out in my mind, which might seem odd because he actually doesn’t appear except in conversation, but the discussions of his actions towards Terri are so much a part of the story creating some of the only conflict among the characters. Speaking of Ed, Teri recollects that he, “Loved her so much he tried to kill her” (Carver 187). That statement rubbed me the wrong way. I remember thinking about that statement against what I hold as my standard for love found in Christian scriptures. Descriptions such as, “Love is kind…It is not self-seeking…It always protects” (New International Version, 1 Cor. 13. 4,5,7) and, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15. 13). Ed says that he loves Terri but under this lens does he? In my mind he does not. There is passion expressed about their relationship but there is also passion in the most brutal war. I do not think that passion alone means love. What about his other actions? Maybe by what he does he can show that he loves Terri? He is willing to shoot himself because he has some feeling for her but he is laying down his life for his own desires not for another person.
Another piece of the story that stuck out to me is that as it progresses and they continue to talk the couples all end up intoxicated, sitting in the dark. The narrator observes at the end when all of their ideas run out, “…not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.” (Carver 195). They are trying to find out what love is but all the while they are deadening their senses and reason with gin and falling deeper in the darkness of ignorance. The symbolism of them trying to gain the light of knowledge in the darkness was striking. It made me think that love as I see it should be something that is found in the light not in the dark. I did not want any part of what these people saw as love: I immediately wanted to read about what I think love is. I do not want what these people offer on the subject because they do not seem to know themselves what it was that they actually feel for each other, whether what they feel for each other is a lasting bond between them or just a temporary feeling. I would rather have the love that Mel saw between two of his patients, an older couple recovering from a serious car wreck, he said the husband was feeling depressed but not because of the accident but because “…he couldn’t see his wife through his eye holes…the man’s heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his go***n head and see his go***n wife” (Carver 194). This description of what love is touches on something real. It is not describing some feeling that wears off and then sinks a marriage; it is a love that is a lasting part of somebody’s life. And that stands out to me from the rest of the story because nobody else in this story has that kind of love.
I do not want it to appear that I know all about this subject, I definitely do not. But from what I do know and believe about love the darkness they are in at the end of the story is can be seen as a picture of their own limitations and shortcomings. The four people talking about a very deep and complex subject do not hold the answers, they just create more questions about what it is they are talking about when they talk about love. But from what I see the answers are not supposed to be found in the story. [Professor's note: What about the old couple?]
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 7th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 187-195.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002
Carver, Raymond. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 7th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. 187-195.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002
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