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

In the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver, a group of friends are sitting around discussing their thoughts on what they think love is. Overall what the reader can see is that none of them can exactly define it because love is always changing. One day a person might be madly in love and the next day the feeling could be gone. The story begins with four friends sitting around a table drinking gin. Somehow they get onto the topic of love which begins a long discussion of they think love is. Out of the four of them, the narrator 's friend, Mel McGinnis, a cardiologist, is having a discussion with his wife, Terri, about her ex husband. Mel is explaining his opinion on Terri’s past relationship and how what her and her ex had wasn’t love after Terri explains that her ex was extremely abusive and showed his love by dragging terri around on the floor screaming “I love you bitch”. Terri however truly believes that her ex loved her, from this the reader can tell that since Terri was in an abusive relationship that her perception on love might distorted. Even though Terri’s ex abused her, she revealed she still felt sympathy for him when mentioning his attempts at suicide; “He shot himself in the mouth. But he bungled that too. Poor

Throughout the whole story, each member of the group was sure they knew what love was. However when trying to verbally describe it out loud, none of them could do so well enough to get across what they meant. Mel tried using two different examples but neither explanation ever went anywhere. Terri was sure she knew what love was based on an abusive relationship, showing the reader that her idea or perception of love is warped. Nick and Laura both just knew they loved each other but only being together for eighteen months they were still in their honeymoon phase with their blinders