When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver Analysis

When the word love is brought up, people seem to feel uncomfortable. It brings great controversy between people because no one really knows how to define it. To some it’s when others happiness is their happiness, or when they feel great comfort around a certain someone that they can speak freely to. Everyone has a different opinion on love, it’s a hard topic to discuss. Carver does a great job showing his depiction of love in his story, “What We Talk about When we Talk about Love.” He successfully shows his views of love by allowing us to see love through others point of view.
Carver begins his story in a casual setting. A group of four friends, Mel, Laura, Nick and Terri are all sitting at a round table passing around a bottle of gin. These friends aren’t just your ordinary friends, they’re actually couples. Mel and Terri are married and so are nick and Laura. The story is narrated by Nick. Throughout the story, nick is more of a listener. He never knew how to explain love but he made observations as his friends talked. Because of the gin, they were all intoxicated and the topic of love was brought up. Carver introduces Terri as one who is definite about her views of love. She starts off by discussing about her ex husband Ed, who is dead now. According to Terri, Ed loved her so much, he tried to kill her. Ed used to constantly beat her to death and yell “I Love you” as he dragged her by her ankles. Not only was he abusing her, but he also tried to kill himself a couple of times. The man dragged her across the floor by her ankles and she still considered it love. …show more content…
They all had different views of love, but no one could give an exact definition. There were so many different stories, but no one could explain how love was used. They know love is real, but can’t seem to put it all together. Carver has no definition for love, there are so many theories out there, but he was never sure on what was the real