What We Talk About When We Talk About Love By Raymond Carver

Love is a four-letter word that most everyone has a different opinion about. In the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” Raymond Carver, uses the two couples sitting around the kitchen table discussing their opinions of love, to show how difficult it is to express what love is through language. Throughout the story the couples stay at the table in the kitchen. “Their restriction or confinement in the kitchen in many ways mirrors the restrictions or inadequacies of language to define what love is” (McManus). Love brings out the best and the worst in people. This is clear when Terri speaks up first about her opinion of love. She brought up her past relationship with a guy named Ed. She claims that Ed loved her so much that he tried to killed himself. (Carver) She went on to tell about Ed physically abusing her and while doing so he would profess

Herb, Terri’s husband is the next to try and discuss what he thinks love is. At the beginning of the story Herb insists that love is nothing but spiritual love. Later, he then begins to talk about love in a physical and sentimental sense. Then, once Herb had a few drinks he talked about his perception of love and how it would all become a memory if something was to happen to one of the significant others. This leaves Herb questioning what love is and why they are even speaking of it. It does not stop him from still trying to express what love is. He goes on to tell a story about an elderly couple that was in a wreck. “He cannot finish his story because alcohol has robbed him of coherence. His language, the “concrete word,” becomes crude and vulgar as he tries to prove his point about true love” (Simpson). The alcohol has left Herb not being able to articulate the emotional meaning of his story. Even with all of Herbs thoughts about love he was still not able to express what love is through