What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver

Because love is universally perceived, everyone can relate to the author. The reader experiences a great deal of empathy and slight distress when Nicole, as well as Teague, goes through the experience and effects of her cancer. “Love wasn’t something I felt anymore,” Teague expresses, “It was something I did,” (281). This statement authenticates that he had the truest love for her. He validates this even more so by comforting and providing for Nicole through selfless actions during her sickness whereas others would have given up if the relationship did not attribute to real love. He proved his romantic love, a once inner feeling, through deeds that were physical and clearly apparent. A similar, yet different love, was further

In The Painted Door, the setting is a small farm which supports a man named John and his wife, Ann. The farm on which they live is rather desolate as they are not in a very close proximity to any of their neighbours and are often secluded to their house during the winter seasons with their only interactions being a game of cards with their neighbour, Steven. This scenario in which these two live can be reflected by the environment around them. The story takes place in the midst of a tremendous blizzard, the blizzard is so powerful that Ann can’t walk outside without being pushed over by the wind. This snow covered abyss exemplifies how alone the couple is. The darkness and literal isolation from the rest of the world are clear indicators of this. The dark and cold also represents how Ann views her relationship with John. She yearns for his affection and his attention, but despite these needs all John ever does is work. He works himself to the bone so that Ann can be comfortable with her place in life failing to realize that all she’s ever wanted was affection and company, which she eventually finds in Steven. The Lamp At Noon also makes good use of its setting to help develop the themes as well as the marriage of this story’s couple, Paul and Ellen. The setting of this story is a dried up farm where no crops grow. The whole farm is shrouded in a cloud of dust and wind. The dust fills the air of Paul and Ellen’s house completely smothering everything with dust. Ellen, coming from a richer household, urges Paul to leave believing that they have no future here and that the crops will never grow again. Ellen left a life of comfort and luxury for a dusty, decrepit farm, resulting in feelings of isolation, anger and hopelessness. However, Paul is determined to stay and live off the land, he has faith that the crops will grow and their farm will be prosperous once more. This is

Compare and contrast the ways McEwan and Fitzgerald present the complexities of human love in light of this comment.

The short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver, is about two married couples drinking gin and having a talk about the nature of love. The conversation is a little sloppy, and the characters make some comments which could either be meaningless because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream, or could be the characters' true feelings because of excessive alcohol in the bloodstream. Overall, the author uses this conversation to show that when a relationship first begins, the people involved may have misconceptions about their love, but this love will eventually die off or develop into something much more meaningful.

When he first walks in Nick judges Tom and Daisy's lives based on the appearance of the house, perfect and romanticized, yet he soon learns that this first impression is an overstatement. Nick's use of diction such as 'fragilely bound' (12) and 'French windows' (12) connote that their lives may look perfect on the

"Although there was evening brightness showing through the windows of the bunkhouse, inside it was dust". This shows that the light tries to get in but never manages to penetrate the darkness. This is important to the themes of the story because workers' hope for a future farm is just like the light while the cruel reality is like the darkness. Their efforts to realize this plan is just like the light trying to penetrate the darkness, but their dream

Carver’s short story “Cathedral” is about a man and a woman who are married. The woman’s blind friend Robert, whose wife just died is coming to stay with them because he plans on visiting his dead wife’s relatives nearby. Robert knew the man’s wife because she worked for him one summer, reading to Robert. The wife and Robert stayed in touch over the years by sending tapes to each other, and letting each other know about what was going on in their lives. When the man hears Robert is coming over he makes idiotic comments about Robert’s wife and felt that Robert would be a burden on them because he is blind. The man and the woman proceed to argue over the situation. The wife tells her husband, “If you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit, I’d make him feel comfortable” (Carver, “Cathedral” 34). The man responds to this by stating, “I don’t have any blind friends” (Carver, “Cathedral” 34). When Robert finally arrives, they converse, drink, and eat together. After, the wife goes upstairs, the man and Robert begin to smoke some weed together. While the wife was sleeping, they start watching TV together and talking. Robert asks the man to explain to him what a cathedral looks like because cathedrals came up on the TV. The man has trouble explaining it and cannot describe to Robert what a cathedral looks like. Then Robert asks the man to draw a cathedral with him. Robert request that the man close his eyes, and they begin to draw. This is where the story ends and it seems that this is when the man became aware of the difficult lives blind people live as he could not explain what a cathedral looked like, and he could not see his drawing.

In the short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, the narrator is a dynamic character because of the way his thoughts adjust throughout the entirety of the story. The beginning of the story shows the narrator only being able to see physical things with his eyes. By the end, the narrator sees a different perspective through his imagination. Robert, the blind man that visits the narrator and his wife, brings out the imagination from within the narrator. The narrator is a dynamic character because he changes his judgment of Robert from a more prejudice view to a more acceptable one.

We live in a society that has increasingly stomped on love, depicting it as cruel, superficial and full of complications. Nowadays it is easy for people to claim that they are in love, even when their actions say otherwise, and it is just as easy to claim that they are not when they really are. Real love is difficult to find and keeping it alive is even harder, especially when one must overcome their own anxieties and uncertainties. This is the main theme present in Russell Banks’ short story “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” as well as in “The Fireman’s Wife,” written by Richard Bausch. These narratives, although similar in some aspects, are completely different types of love stories.

Love exists in the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro and in the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. in Munro’s short story the plot is that of a mentally ill wife, Fiona, who falls in love with another patient while her husband still tries to hang on to their old love. Her husband eventually wants to have an affair with the wife of the man his wife is having an affair with. Their love changed because of their circumstances due to ill health. Carver’s story discusses the different definitions of love due to the type and quality of relationships; everyone has a different definition. Love also exists all over the world within different environments and cultures. The concept of love depends upon the environment in which it inhabits. Love is dependent on the life of the people in love and it also depends on their current environment. Nature and nurture are also huge factors into the development and process of love. What nature and nurture mean is whether it is due to how the person lives and acts along with their personality compared to whether it’s all in their genetics beforehand. Love is more on the nurture side instead of the nature side of human experience.

Carver found himself in a very dark place. Carver now suffered from alcoholism, many different drug addictions, and even depression as a result of his divorce. Although Carver’s life was looking down, he did not give up. Three years later, Carver decided to pull his life together. He attended many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a decided to take up writing. Carver even got re-married. After finally getting his life back together, Carver decided to start writing again. This time in his life is the time that he created some of his most famous short-stories. The following are some of those stories: “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love”, “The Cathedral”, and “Elephant.” Carver’s second marriage, turn around with his alcoholism and drug addictions, and new writings are all included in what is known as Raymond Carver’s “second life.”(King)

The outside area where Nick, Daisy, Tom and Jordan have dinner helps to form the notion of the romantic idealism that seemed to exist at the time. The “rosy-coloured” porch and the way the “last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her (Daisy’s) glowing face” symbolise the naive, miscalculated dream of a perfect world that we later find out perfectly describes Gatsby’s feelings towards Daisy.

In Raymond Carver’s story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” there is a wide array of opinions concerning the true definition of love. I believe that the character with the most absurd idea of love is Mel. Mel is Terri’s second husband. He claims to only believe in spiritual love. In his past, Mel spent “five years in seminary.” This is obviously what he bases his idea upon. Mel declares that if he could go back in time, he would enjoy being a knight in armor to shield him from other people. This reveals to me that Mel is emotionally closed off and concealed from other people. Furthermore, as seen through his wife, Terri, Mel does not have the passion inside him that is necessary to experience love. The only love that Mel does experience is the love toward his children, but that is love in a different sense. Loving his children is a natural instinct. They are born into his care, and are made with his own blood. His love for them was not searched for. It just came to be when they were born. Mel’s relationship with Terri, or any other women that he may have encountered in the past is distant and indifferent as to who they are inside. Mel’s ideas toward love are

Love makes us do crazy things. It makes us become people we never thought we were. Love gives us an ultimatum about our life. Love is a powerful bond and wicked curse. When we love, we love hard. We will do anything for love and to be loved. In “My Sister’s Marriage,” Cynthia Marshall Rich presents the different views of love upon similar yet different characters. Two sisters, who share a loving yet manipulative Father show the different ways love affects us. Sarah-Ann and Olive have many similar and different relationships with love, their dreams, and their traits.

What we talk about when we talk about love was written by Ray Carver. The setting takes place in New Mexico. Mel and his wife Terri, and their friends Nick and Laura are just drinking and talking about love. It’s funny how whenever I sit with friends (Nick and Laura) and just talk, we always end up talking about love.