The Turbulent Love Analysis

The Misconceived Relationship In the text “Space, Whether, and Why,” Ted McLoof 's describes his turbulent relationship with a woman who initially impresses him with her apparent West Coast sophistication. Throughout the text, the narrator uses the distinction between his own East Coast background and the woman's West Coast background to describe the many differences between them. The narrator's description of the relationship portrays him as a very straightforward person, even to the point of childness: he speaks his mind in ordinary language, and he means the things he says. The woman, in contrast, speaks in a respective tone while the narrator wants to address his audience indirectly.When the narrator uses the word 'space,' he is …show more content…
In the beginning, the narrator reports that he always enjoyed talking about “the people I loved and the places I was attached to.” Then he meets a woman who challenges him, questions whether he really loves those people and why he feels so attached to these places. These are not the kind of questions the narrator normally asks himself; he loves who he loves, and on his view, no further analysis is needed. Because he is so impressed with this woman, however, he goes along with her way of questioning things and even begins to believe that there is something admirable and sophisticated about it. Still, the narrator's straightforward manner is not compatible with this West coast inconsistency; he finds it impossible to play along with the woman's language games. When she told him that she “needed space,” he felt compelled to ask “what [she] needed 'space' for.” It is likely obvious to the reader that the woman means she wants to spend time apart from the narrator. Still, his question foreshadows his eventual realization that this West Coast woman does not really know herself any better than the narrator knows himself. She cannot manage a response other than “I'm confused.” This is the point at which a reader may begin to suspect that the woman is not so much using figurative language to communicate her complex feelings, as she is to obscure the fact that she does fully understand how she feels or why she feels that