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When We Talk About Love By Raymond Carver

1069 Words5 Pages

What We Talk About when We Talk About Love The short story “What We Talk When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver is about four friends, Mel, Terri, Laura, and Nick, having a conversation around a table. As they start to drink, the subject comes to “love.” The main topic of their conversation is defining the word love, in other words they are trying to define the actual meaning of love. However, by the end they don’t end up finding out the definition of love, even though they talked about it the rest of their evening. In the story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Carver uses symbols to show that the definition of love can be expressed by gin, sunlight, and heart. Throughout the book nick, Mel, Terri, and Laura are consuming alcohol during their discussion about love. Their increasing intoxication is mirroring …show more content…

When doing surgery on a heart it does take patience and you must be steady with your hands. Mel has strong beliefs on what is and isn’t love. After Terri explained what happened to her in her last relationship Mel said, “My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it. I don’t know what you’d call it, but I sure know you wouldn’t call that love.” Mel believes that love should not be hurtful yet fixing your heart can really help you see what love should be like. Mel thinks love is something we spend our lives learning about. His thoughts and questions on love, and his insistence that he and us are just “beginners" (56) makes him seem deeply romantic and sincere. His wife Terri gets that sense, saying, “Mel always has love on his mind […], don’t you honey?” (10). When Mel was telling his story about his patients, he thought working on their heart, he could somehow know about their love for one another. He could somehow know what love could feel like and how it could

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The short story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” by Raymond Carver is about four friends- Laura, Mel, Nick, and Terri, gathering on a table and having a conversation. As they start to drink, the subject abruptly comes to “love.” Then, the main topic of their conversation becomes to find the definition of love, in other word to define what exactly love means. However, at the end, they cannot find out the definition of love even though they talk on the subject for a day long. Raymond Carver in “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” illustrates the difficulty of defining love by using symbols such as heart, gin, and the sunlight.

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