In “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” the theme is love. The story is mainly based on dialogues between two couples, Mel and Terresa, and Laura and Nick. While they talked a lot, at the end of the story, they did not come up with a clear definition of love. Through symbolisms and writing style used in the story, Carver examed how difficult to define love. Raymond Carver was a minimalist writer, whose stories were written in a sparse use of language and paired down prose (Brent). That means Carver used a simple form and language in the his stories. Most readers thought nothing happened in the story, but actually Carver wrote enough for readers to understand the story. At the beginning of the story, it said “Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist,
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You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along” (Carver). Mel had a troubled marriage with his first wife. And when Terri said her violent ex-boyfriend loved her, Mel refuted it immediately with a strong tone. I can feel how his marriage had a significant influence on him. Therefore, he wanted to be a knight to protect himself. He thought people could not get hurt easily by wearing the suit of armor. Love is not always perfect, and it may hurt those involved. As Terri stated she still thought her ex-boyfriend loved her despite the abusive …show more content…
The author tried to show us that love sometimes involves hurting, separating, hating and forgetting. As mentioned in the story, Mel said if something happened to one of them one day, the partner will be sorrow for a while, but after that, he or she will continue their life. The will find someone else to love and the love between you and him or her will become a memory (Carver). The author here revealed that love is not always perfect and permanent.
Carver ended the story in an unique way by stating Nick hearing everyone’s heartbeat and the conversation suddenly stopped. When I read this ending, I think the author means love is all about connecting and sharing each other’s heartbeat. Although the author did not explicitly give us a definition of love, we can still interpret some implied definitions from the story’s symbolisms such as knight and
You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. It was all right being a knight until gunpowder and muskets and pistols came along” (Carver). Mel had a troubled marriage with his first wife. And when Terri said her violent ex-boyfriend loved her, Mel refuted it immediately with a strong tone. I can feel how his marriage had a significant influence on him. Therefore, he wanted to be a knight to protect himself. He thought people could not get hurt easily by wearing the suit of armor. Love is not always perfect, and it may hurt those involved. As Terri stated she still thought her ex-boyfriend loved her despite the abusive …show more content…
The author tried to show us that love sometimes involves hurting, separating, hating and forgetting. As mentioned in the story, Mel said if something happened to one of them one day, the partner will be sorrow for a while, but after that, he or she will continue their life. The will find someone else to love and the love between you and him or her will become a memory (Carver). The author here revealed that love is not always perfect and permanent.
Carver ended the story in an unique way by stating Nick hearing everyone’s heartbeat and the conversation suddenly stopped. When I read this ending, I think the author means love is all about connecting and sharing each other’s heartbeat. Although the author did not explicitly give us a definition of love, we can still interpret some implied definitions from the story’s symbolisms such as knight and