What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

     In contrast to these fairly pessimistic views on love, the author describes an instance in which a couple found true love. Mel tells an anecdote of an old couple that was admitted to the emergency room after a very bad car accident. The two people were wrapped up in full body casts, and as a result they could not see each other. Mel noticed that the old man was very sad, even

How is a human suppose to love? Love is just a statement, a word, a word is just a sound. When you really love something, in loves you back in whatever way it has to love. But what if that love isn't good enough? Doesn’t meet your standards? "‘What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.’ I didn't think that this was true, […] but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true. So I didn't argue” (Knowles 111).  That is just life, love is something that is always there and needs to be accepted in anyway it can.

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 is undoubtedly one of the most frequently explored subjects in the literary world. Whether the focus is a confession of love, criticism of love, tale of love, or simply a tale about what love is, such literary pieces force readers to question the true meaning and value of love. Raymond Carver accomplishes this in his short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” As the unadorned setting and the personality of each character unfold, the reader realizes that Carver is making a grave comment on the existence of love. Carver utilizes strong contrast, imagery, and diction to ultimately suggest that love cannot be defined concretely and therefore cannot be defined in words, and because of this, it is better off unexplored.

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.

After analyzing Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," it is easy to see that there are several different ideas concerning true love that the characters in the story are in dispute over. Terri's idea of real love is the most valid out of the group at the table. All of the members of the group are rather confused as to what real love is. Terri is included as one of the confused. However, I believe that she is the closest to understanding what love is. A key piece of evidence demonstrating her understanding of love is her remark to Laura and Nick. She scolds the couple for basing their relationship on physical aspects, rather than emotion or passion. Terri, like the rest of the party, is on her second marriage.

Great Job on your summary, I agree with you especially where you said that you can see the love between Laura and Nick through there action even though they haven’t said much. I feel as if Mel goes into a frenzy about Love is because his relationship with Terri is struggling and, like some of our classmates stated maybe they are not in love, well anymore. The reason I say this is due to the statement he made in the story, if he wasn’t with Terri, and Nick wasn’t his best friend he would of loved Laura. Which in my opinion is very rude to say especially in front of your spouse and friend. Another statement I would like to bring up is during the conversation he wants to call his kids. Then Terri states it’s going to make him feel worse since

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.

Symbols are an essential part of daily life, since they help to express ideas without the need of a detailed explanation; traffic signs informing drivers without short paragraphs being posted in their place, facial gestures expressing feelings without having to describe them verbally, just to name a common couple. Likewise, symbols are a crucial part of a literary work, helping the author subtly incorporate concepts throughout the work. An author will deliberately incorporate a symbol into his or her literary work, which alone would mean nothing, but in context carries out a point the author is trying to make. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is a short story about four friends trying to find the true meaning of love, trying

Sharon Olds in "True Love" wonders about a true meaning of love in her uniquely written poem about a married couple. She hints that true love is about belonging to one another. That belonging or self-possession is reflected via ties of marriage. She further says that children, which are a product of marriage, only tighten marital bonds even more. The speaker starts her poem by describing two people having sex and looking at each other in a “complete friendship”. However, as much as the poem at first seems to have a positive meaning, the message appears to be quite opposite. In fact, “after making love, we look at each other in complete friendship" (2-3) sounds odd if used when describing the love between friends with benefits or a married couple. Friends with benefits contribute to unhealthy relationships that they are in, which is built on lust and only physical desire. Her poem, perhaps is an ironic portrayal of true love. A true love, if it even exists, is very difficult to preserve and can take a different turn especially within the marriage.

Everyone does not always have the same views on love. In Carver’s short story, Mel implies how he feels no one truly knows

When someone as a reader looks at Mel’s situation, it is a totally different kind of love. Education, background, social class comes together and describes Mel’s definition about love. To be specific, Mel is an educated person, and he is a cardiologist. However, Mel sees love as something that can be pass on to someone else, and he doesn’t really understand the concept of real love. There might be another reason for Mel definition’s of love, and the reason is Mel’s first love with his first wife (Marjorie). Mel was in love with Marjorie (Mel first wife), but suddenly everything just collapsed, and he didn’t know what cause the divorce, and what happened to his love. Mel sees love as a “memory not even a memory” (Carver 676), and that is when he started to talk about love at the beginning of the story. Mel thought about love in an educational way not in his own personal way. He defined love based on what he had learned in school and in his educational way not personal way. In my opinion, Mel wanted to do the same thing that Ed did to Terri but in his own way. Mel was more educated than Ed, so he wasn’t going to fight with his

   Love is one of the most confusing emotions that one can experience. It is simple yet complicated, unconditional but demanding, overused and unique. It is hard to explain what its means to feel love, to feel loved, or to be in love, however, there are aspects of love that are easily expressed. For example, ones unquestionable affection to the one they love, or the hardships and sacrifice that is endured for loved ones, and the underlying fact that once it is experienced it is not easily dismissed. The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller describes love in just these ways, and, most of all, as the ultimate moral value that is the eternal bond that keeps people together. One can

After reading the entire story, I began seeing signs of Mel feeling superior to Terrie. In my opinion he does not value his wife. He goes on to say "It mean, it was killing the old fart just because he couldn’t look at the fucking woman" (530). He even tells his wife "Just shut up for once in your life" (527) which would have resulted in a slap to the face if a man was to speak to me in that manner. He does not value her opinion and does not give her the time of day to speak on why she believes her ex truly did love her. Not only did he tell his wife to shut up, but he even told Laura, "Laura, If I didn’t have Terrie and if I didn’t love her so much, and if Nick wasn’t my best friend, I'd fall in love with you, I'd carry you off, honey" (530).

The other day I was babysitting my three-year-old niece, a most conniving little angel. As she sat gawking at my girlfriend's brother, Matthew, who was eating potato chips, she told me that she loved me "so much." She had already devoured her potato chips, but she obviously wanted more. Many more expressions of love proceeded to drip from her lips. Finally, the question came; "Reg, can I have some more chips?" At first, I thought this little show of bribery was cute and funny, but then I started to think about the true meaning of love. What is true love? Poets, philosophers, religious leaders, and the American media all have different definitions for this word. Too often, love is conceived as doing whatever it