Raymond Clevie Carver,
Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was a short story writer
and poet. Carver was a major writer of the
late 20th century and a major force in the revitalization of the short story in
the 1980s.
Raymond Carver
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Born
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Died
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Occupation
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Writer and poet.
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Nationality
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Period
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1958–1988
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Literary movement
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About his book:
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love is the name of a 1981 collection of
short stories by American writer Raymond Carver, as well as the
title of one of the stories in the collection.
The
Stories
Why Don't You Dance?
Viewfinder
Mr. Coffee and Mr.
Fixit
Gazebo
Could See the
Smallest Things
Sacks
The Bath
Tell the Women We're
Going
After the Denim
So Much Water So
Close to Home
The Third Thing That
Killed My Father
A Serious Talk
The Calm
Popular Mechanics
Everything Stuck to
Him
What We
Talk About When We Talk About Love
Main
Characters
Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist,
45 years old and is married to Teresa. Nick describes Mel as tall and rangy
with curly soft hair. Teresa also known as Terri is Mel's second wife and they
live in together in Albuquerque. Terri is described by Nick as bone-thin with a
pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair. Mel and Terri have two friends named
Nick and Laura. Nick is 38 years old and is the narrator of the story. Laura is
35, married to Nick and works as a legal secretary.
Plot
The story
is about four friends—Mel, Teresa (Terri), Laura, and Nick. The setting is Mel's house, around a table
with a bucket of ice in the middle. A
bottle of gin is inside it.
They soon
start to talk about love (as the title suggests).
Terri has had an abusive
relationship, the abuse, she says, deriving from love. Ed, Terri's former
abusive boyfriend, "loved her so
much he tried to kill her." Ed would beat Terri, he dragged her around
the living room by her ankles knocking her into things along the way. Terri
believed that Ed loved her and his abuse was his way of showing it. No matter
what Terri said, Mel refused to believe that was "love." Ed would
stalk Mel and Terri. He would call Mel at work with threatening messages. At
one point Mel was so scared he bought a gun, and made out a will. Mel even
wrote to his brother in California saying that "if something happened to
him" to look for Ed.
Her
abusive boyfriend eventually committed suicide after two attempts (as Terri
sees it, another act of love).
Ed's first attempt at suicide was
when Terri had left him. Ed had drunk rat poison, but was rushed to the
hospital where he was saved. Ed's second attempt and success was shooting
himself in the mouth. A person heard the shot from Ed's room and called the
manager. Terri and Mel argued about whether she could be in the room with him
when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died, as Terri put it, "he
never came up out of it.
“Soon
afterward Mel begins a story about an older couple and a drunk driver. The
drunken driver was a teenager and pronounced dead at the scene. The
elderly couple survived the car accident because they were wearing seat belts.
Mel was called into the hospital one night just as he sat down to dinner. Once
he got there he saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He said that
they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions,
and lacerations."
The couple were in casts and
bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story was that when the
elderly couple was moved into ICU, Intensive Care Unit, the husband was very
upset.
Mel would visit the couple every
day and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth hole he told him that he was
upset, because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel would stray
from the topic with more talk about Ed, his own personal thoughts on love,
hatred toward his ex wife, and life as a knight.
Mel felt
that even though you love a person, if something was to happen to them, the
person still living will grieve but love again.
After
finishing the second bottle of gin, they talk about going to dinner, but no one
makes any moves to proceed with their plans.
Symbolism
The
obvious symbol in "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love" is
love. The story illustrates that love can be viewed in many different ways. Mel
believes that real love is nothing less than spiritual love. Terri believed
that even though Ed beat her up, that was his way of showing his love. Both
Nick and Laura know what they think of love, but are not sure how to express
their opinions.
The more
important symbol in the story, though, is talking. Throughout the story, the characters attempt
to put into words just what love means to them, and find themselves growing
increasingly inarticulate as they attempt to do so.
This
symbolism reaches a climax when Mel tells the story of the old couple, whose
greatest connection is simply seeing each other; they only need eye contact to
reestablish their connection, rather than proclamations to one another of how
they feel.
What is a Phrasal Verb?
