Talking About Love Essay, Research Paper

Talking about love.

What is love? It may look like a stupid inquiry, but on 2nd scrutiny, it doesn t seem rather so stupid. After all, love is a feeling. How can we truly depict what a feeling is or agencies? The significance of any feeling can differ greatly between persons, and the significance of love is no different. In What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver weaves a narrative of two twosomes analyzing what love is. While Carver doesn t reveal any great truths about what love is, he does do a statement about the nature of true love. Carver makes the point that modern, on-again, off-again relationships have small to make with love. True love is about necessitating person so severely that it s intolerable to believe of life without that individual. There is a all right line between true love and compulsion ; the former being one of the most fantastic feelings that worlds can see, and the latter many times stoping in calamity. Carver makes these points in the narrative through his usage of subplot, imagination, and symbolism.

The most obvious technique Carver uses in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love to do his point is through the subplots in the narrative. The subplots revolve around the two chief twosomes in the narrative, and another twosome that is introduced by one of the characters near the terminal of the narrative. The first twosome, Mel and Terri, had been in really bad relationships before run intoing one another. They have been together for five old ages, and married for four. Mel s matrimony to his ex-wife Marjorie seemingly ended on a really bad note. Carver states near the terminal of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, She s allergic to bees, Mel said. If I m non praying she ll acquire married once more, I m praying she ll acquire herself annoyed to decease by a drove of sleep togethering bees ( 444 ) . Clearly whatever love Mel one time felt for his ex-wife has evaporated. Terri besides suffered through a bad relationship at the custodies of an opprobrious adult male named Ed. Terri and Mel argue over Terri s belief that Ed truly did love her, though non in a manner that was healthy to her or to Ed. After Terri and Ed separated, Ed made menaces against Terri and Mel, and eventually committed self-destruction. The 2nd twosome, Nick and Laura, had both been antecedently married to other people. Carver doesn t province the fortunes environing their subsequent divorces, and merely provinces that they met at work and started a relationship that led to marriage. Carver describes Nick and Laura as still on the Honeymoon ( 439 ) . They are still at the point in their relationship where they are really affectionate toward one another, which contrasts with Mel and Terri s slightly grating comments to each other. In Carver s Couples Talk About Love, Fred Moramarco describes the relationship between Nick and Laura as a relationship of what we might name light familiarity. Mentioning to Carver s description of Laura as being easy to be with ( 439 ) , Moramarco states, This is the ideal modern-day relationship between a adult male and a adult female who are friends every bit good as lovers, and the operative word here is easy. We all seek easy relationships, but the existent universe keeps irrupting. Carver seems to depict both twosomes as being together more because of convenience, instead than any strong demand or want to be with each other. Moramarco refers to this state of affairs as Serial, transient love. During the class of the conversation, Mel introduces the 3rd twosome later in the narrative, by stating Nick and Laura a narrative about them. Moramarco describes the manner in which they are compared with the other two twosomes: Both Mel and Terri on the one manus, and Nick and Laura on the other every bit good as Mel and Marjorie and Terri and Ed are contrasted with yet another twosome referred to in the narrative, an aged twosome in their seventiess who have been in an car accident. Significantly, their camper was slammed by a adolescent rummy driver who was killed in the accident. The old twosome survived, but merely hardly. Carver intends the twosome to stand for our traditional construct of love life-time monogamy a love that lasts until decease do us portion. What troubles Mel about the love between this old twosome is that the hubby is disquieted non so much because he and his married woman are severely injured, but because his face is bandaged so badly he can non travel his caput and expression at his married woman. Moramarco goes on to explicate this kind of dependent love is closer to the love that Ed had for Terri than any of the other twosomes described in Carver s narrative. Carver uses the subplots of the different twosomes to contrast against each other, and show that compulsion and true love really are much closer than many people may believe. He besides uses the subplots to supply some item into the point of views that the different twosomes come from, in regard to the issue of love. The fact that Nick and Laura have much less to state may hold to make with their comparative rawness, at least every bit far as the length of their relationship. And, as Carver provinces, Mel McGinnis was speaking. Mel McGinnis is a heart specialist, and sometimes that gives him the right.

Another technique that Carver uses in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, is imagery. Carver s usage of imagination is slightly elusive, but is used efficaciously to stand for certain thoughts in the narrative. The first usage of imagination is that of visible radiation in the narrative. At the beginning of the narrative, Carver states that, Sunlight filled the kitchen from the large window behind the sink ( 437 ) . He subsequently describes the visible radiation in assorted phases ; The afternoon Sun was

like a presence in this room, the broad visible radiation of easiness and generousness ( 440 ) , The sunlight inside the room was different now, altering, acquiring dilutant ( 443 ) , and The visible radiation was run outing out of the room, traveling back through the window where it had come from ( 443 ) . The visible radiation in the narrative is representative of the rhythm of life, and straight relates to some of the symbolism that Carver uses in the narrative. Carver besides uses imagination when depicting the characters in assorted phases of poisoning. He states, Mel poured himself another drink. He looked at the label closely as if analyzing a long row of Numberss. Then he easy put the bottle down on the tabular array and easy reached for the tonic H2O ( 442-443 ) . He goes on to state that Laura was holding a difficult clip illuming her coffin nail ( 443 ) , and, He crossed one leg over the other. It seemed to take him a long clip to make it ( 444 ) . Carver is utilizing the poisoning of the characters to once more depict a life rhythm. With the imagination of the visible radiation and the poisoning, he shows a rhythm of a bright and consistent clip that progressively winds down, as if fading off. He uses words such as easy many times, to exemplify how things tend to travel at a slower gait later in life. This once more relates to the symbolism elsewhere in the narrative. In an interesting bend, Carver uses alcohol itself as both imagination and symbolism in the narrative. As imagination, the intoxicant, and the characters increasing ingestion of it, is a statement about the malaise that we have talking about love and affairs of the bosom. It seems that the more the characters drink, the easier clip they have baring their psyches, and sharing their feelings. At the same clip though, the ideas and feelings they portion become more and more confused and abstract in direct relation to the sum of intoxicant that is consumed. For case, subsequently in the narrative, Mel starts speaking of chefs and lieges, and the conversation seems to roll off from the subject of what love is. He besides becomes more rough utilizations more profanity while he gets drunker. Carver provinces, Vassals, vass, Mel said, what the screw s the difference? You know what I meant anyhow. All right, Mel said, So I m non educated. I learned my material. I m a bosom sawbones, certain, but I m merely a mechanic. I go in and sleep together around and I fix things. Shit. Mel said.

Carver s usage of symbolism is what truly ties the narrative together. He uses three chief symbols that kind of conveying the subject of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love to the surface. Alcohol is a major symbol in this narrative, even though it besides serves as a signifier of imagination. Alcohol in the narrative is used to typify the kind of love that has become permeant in our society. In consequence, it can be fun for a piece, but in the terminal it leaves us unfilled, and experiencing like we ve been run over by a truck. This is in direct contrast to Carver s usage of nutrient as a symbol in the narrative. In Carver s Couples Talk About Love, Moramarco provinces, Drinking is frequently contrasted with feeding. Food is about ever presented as both nurturing and fostering. Eating is a communal activity, while intoxicant is a sort of empty replacement for it that neither nourishes nor raisings but distorts and confuses. He goes on, All of the characters are hungry for love, but love as we excessively frequently see it in the modern-day universe is a shallow replacement for the existent thing. Being hungry for love is one thing, but making something about that hungriness is another. Carver uses the imagination of declining visible radiation and turning poisoning as a metaphor for our journey through life. During this journey, excessively many of us settle for love that is unfulfilling ( intoxicant ) , alternatively of waiting to happen a truer signifier of love ( nutrient ) . Finally, Carver uses the gin bottle itself as a symbol that represents the manner we pass around the term love in the modern universe, without of all time truly halting to analyze what it means. The point where Mel stopped and looked at the label closely as if analyzing a long row of Numberss ( 443 ) , illustrates his attempt to understand, but he has become so intoxicated with intoxicant ( false love ) , that he fails to truly hold on what he is looking at.

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver examines the inquiry of what love truly is, and shows us that love in modern society as a street arab trade good, is one of the greatest false beliefs of our clip. He attempts to acquire us to analyze the inquiry for ourselves, so that possibly the construct of true love won t be lost or forgotten by the clip our kids s kids head out to happen love. He shows us that true love is about more than lecherousness and comfort. It is about demand, desire, yearning, and familiarity of the kind that many of us don t of all time know. Possibly by inquiring ourselves the inquiry What do we speak about when we talk about love? we may detect that the love that many of us settle for International Relations and Security Network t the love we truly want. In order to be true to ourselves we need to halt imbibing from the bottle of Moramarco s Serial, transient love, and get down looking for something a little more alimentary. For without nutriment, we as people, and as a society, can t turn, and will melt away every bit certainly as the scene Sun that Carver so articulately describes.

Plants Cited

Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Literature And The Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahon, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. New Jersey: Prentice, 1999. 437-444

Moramarco, Fred. Carver s Couples Talk About Love. The Raymond Carver Web Site. Ed. Tom Luce. Sept. 1997. Whitman College. 26 Aug. 1999