What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - An Analysis

            

         Ever elusive and fleeting to many, love can be a rather difficult emotion, experience, journey, or four-letter word to concretely define. Whatever type of love one is speaking about, it becomes increasingly more difficult to express love once someone else is on the receiving end of its meaning. Raymond Carver attempts to inch people closer to a definition of love in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a short story involving two couples, and their conversation on what they believe love means. Two couples debate and share stories about the type of love they believe to be the true representation of love. Even if it contradicts their current love for their significant other, each person is steadfast in their belief. The conflict the characters engage in reveals the true nature of their relationships, and their point of view seems to waver in the end. Each character has their own idea of what is a true representation of love and it develops and changes throughout the story. Characters that saw eye to eye lost sight of their shared ideals. Yet, despite all their musings on the different aspects of love, none of them get to the core of what love is, or how it should be represented. Though Raymond Carver’s title suggests that there will be a resolution to what it means to talk about love, he leaves the reader no more enlightened on the subject than when the story began. Instead, Carver only accomplishes demonstrating the limitations of a person to reconcile with their significant other a coherent representation of love. Through the use of setting, symbolism, and characterization, Carver more aptly lays out the possibility that love may not exist as it’s represented traditionally.

            If ever there were a couple for whom love was absent, it would be Mel and Terri. These characters embody the toxic forms love can take. This toxicity is evident from the start of the story when Carver writes, “Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her” (1). Terri, whether because of trauma or something more insidious, believed that this violent and abusive representation of love was true love. She explains to the group that Ed, the ex-boyfriend she speaks of, loved her “in his own way” (2). This incites the first objection in the couple. Mel refutes her claims of love with, “‘My God, don't be silly. That's not love, and you know it […] I don't know what you'd call it, but I sure know you wouldn't call it love'" (2). Though Terri insists, Mel cannot come to terms with this type of love. Carver demonstrates that whatever concept of love Terri has is not love and Mel’s comment reinforces this idea.

            Carver further distances Terri and Mel from true love in their juxtaposition at the table. This symbolism aims at reiterating to the reader that Terri and Mel are not emotionally or physically in touch with their feelings of love for each other. Carver writes, “Mel reached across the table and touched Terri’s cheek with his fingers” (2). The distance between the characters and the effort of reaching across the table further cements how out of sync Terri and Mel are in how they define love. Carver tries to further show this vast detachment by then having Lura and Nick, the other couple, touch: “I picked up Laura’s hand” (3). Their ease in physical affection contrasts with what Terri and Mel lack. Moreover, Terri’s loneliness is exemplified when she is described as “[clasping] her arms with her hands” (3). Where Laura and Nick have each other to hold onto for comfort, Terri only has herself sitting across the table from her partner. If they truly were in love, why compound the distance between Terri and Mel with these obstacles if not to show that they hold no concept of love whatsoever.

            Continuing with the way in which Carver uses the setting to evoke a chasm between the partners, the setting also plays a part in showing the naiveté of the couples. Like bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children, the characters are showered in a “spacious light of ease and generosity” (6). This light is meant to show the child-like wonder that the love they feel for each other oozes out of them. However, it is this child-like wonder that muddles their understanding of love. Carver continues, “We . . . grinned at each other like children who had agreed on something forbidden” (6). This imagery of forbidden truces and “enchanted” (6) light, though employed to show the burgeoning love young couples possess so passionately, only reduces the couples to naïve children; blinded by the bright light to the true meaning of love, they get no closer to a definite endgame in their quest for love.

            However, those with a mind for the frivolous and a doe-eyed, lovestruck countenance, may interject and claim that Carver does have healthy representations of love in his story. These people would point to Nick and Laura and give the couple’s proclivity for physical interaction as evidence of their true love. Carver writes, “Laura and I touched knees again. I put a hand on her warm thigh and left it there” (6). Through this affectionate physicality, contrarians will explicate that Nick and Laura have a genuine attraction for one another. This physicality is a tangible representation of the emotional bond the couple experiences throughout the story. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that this overwhelming love they have for each other is displayed by the couple frequently and ostentatiously: “‘Well, Nick and I know what love is’ . . . I made a big production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was amused” (5). This amorous physical attraction is representative of love. In fact, they are seated closer to each other in relation to Mel and Terri; therefore, Nick and Laura are clearly more truly in love and emotionally closer than Terri and Mel. Herein lies the paradox.

            Surely, Nick and Laura are the epitomai of true love. Carver has clearly laid out the foundation to make it so. This is not so. Because Nick and Laura’s love is represented as primarily physical, it is more indicative of superficial love than true love. Therefore, Carver hasn’t made a case for what true love may be. He writes, “She bumped her knee with my knee. ‘You’re supposed to say something now’” (5). Aloof to what is being said around him, Nick has to be reminded by Laura of the appropriate response to her empty words of being well informed about what love really means. They are still trying to figure things out in their newfound roles as husband and wife. Carver further relates, “‘How long have you been together now?’. . . ‘Going on a year and a half’” (5). This short-lived marriage lacks experience and they, therefore, cannot know what true love is, especially if Nick has to be snapped into a loving response. Their relationship is void of any representation of true love. Mel sums up their state in the matter the best when he says, “‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love’” (6). The way both couples interact with each other physically is very telling of how much they lack in knowing what true love is. They have not reached the end of their journey in discovering what love is; the title is thereby rendered as a misnomer of what is happening in the story. An uncertainty lingers between the four adults.

            As the couples ruminate on their uncertainty, Carver sets the tone for the couples’ conversation about love and its end result. The imagery he describes demonstrates what is happening internally with the couples. Carver writes, “The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner” (11). As mentioned before, the setting is integral to understanding the couples’ comprehension of love. In this instance, the absence of light, not its “generosity” (6), is described and this absence of light is far more illuminating than it was ever in the story. The changing light, and resulting darkness, is that of the unknown. The magical feeling of blossoming love is retreating, leaving only their insecurity of not coming to a consensus on love’s true meaning. Carver adds, “The light was draining out of the room, going back through the window where it had come from. Yet nobody made a move to get up from the table to turn on the overhead light” (15). The couples are unable to bring any light of their own into the situation. They are no more informed about what true love is than when they began their conversation. The receding light is the little they thought they knew about love, and they know it too is leaving them. Knowing they could not complete their journey, Nick, Laura, Terri, and Mel remain in darkness rather than confront their reality.

            Raymond Carver could not offer a definite representation of love in the story because it doesn’t exist; at least not how these couples perceive it. Their representations of love are either too emotionally and physically distant or too preoccupied with appearances that their attempts at loving affections come off as disingenuous. The implications displayed by Carver result in a dark and gloomy view of life, but the reader shouldn’t be discouraged. The inability of the characters to find a proper end to their journey in search of love is even more reason to continue to fight for the true meaning and manner that love should take shape. Though readers are not given a definitive answer, there exists enough to continue the conversation towards a more enlightening resolution. Because even if the characters did not finish their journey for an answer to their question, readers are left with enough to know what love is not. This can in turn be used to perhaps finally find what it is we talk about when we talk about love.

Work Cited

Carver, Raymond. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” The New Yorker. 24 Dec 2007, pp. 1-17. https://public.wsu.edu/~bryanfry/Beginners%20Edited.pdf