What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

An interpretation of the text - Special Post

This fictional story written by Raymond Carver is a conversation between four friends who are trying to describe love or debate what the word love really means. There is Mel, the cardiologist, and his wife, Terri. Then there's Mel’s best friend, Nick, who is also the narrator of the story and Nick’s wife Laura. The entire time, the characters are sitting around a kitchen table passing around a bottle of gin. They are progressively getting drunk as the conversation goes on, making them more vulnerable and honest with their emotions and thoughts. The main topic that circulates is that of love. As the evening progresses, this topic makes things awkward and stirs things up. They bring up relationships from the past and their own opinions of love, creating a defensive atmosphere. Finally, after they have exhausted the subject, there seems to be no definite conclusion. All the baggage and concepts of previous paradigms they have about love, leaves them with nothing to say at the end of the night.

The concepts that are revealed throughout the story are that love is not absolute. If this story were selectively told by one of the characters, then the reader would have a more bias opinion of love. It is like the saying, “You have to hear every side of the story.” Everyone brought their piece of mind to the kitchen table. The four-way conversation is what really brings the questions about love. In the end, you cannot pick a side or choose a winning theory.

At first, the story seems to be creating a definition for love that the reader can catch at the end of the story. This could very well be the case, but the definition is not so clear at first glance. The whole thing starts when Laura mentions her ex-boyfriend, who was extremely violent and had beaten her and even tried to kill her; yet she says that he loved her. Her husband, Mel, is at first very cutthroat and shuns her idea saying things like, “that’s not love and you know it.” Laura appears to be very defensive about how Mel takes it upon himself to categorize love so easily and exclude any cases he deems abnormal. Even his friend Nick suggests that what Mel is saying is that love is absolute. Apparently this is a touchy subject that is scratching the surface when Laura tells her husband, “He did love me, Mel. Grant me that. That’s all I’m asking.” Of course as the reader, undoubtedly one would think that it is absurd to say that an abusive love is really love at all. Initial instincts make us lean more towards Mel’s black and white point of view; that that cannot be love and never will be.

Things start blooming when Laura says something that could be easily overlooked, but brings power to her argument. She says, “It was love. Sure, it’s abnormal in most people’s eyes. But he was willing to die for it. He did die for it.” Right there, Laura was saying that love is passionate, crazy, and worthwhile, worth everything. She was willing to put up with all the abuse only because she felt it was real love through it all. This was a very distinct point of view from that of Mel’s who later on says he would have liked to be a knight because they were always safe from danger. This shows the walls some have around their heart. They want the normal, protected love. It’s not a bad thing, but in the end there is always a risk. Nick informs Mel that being a knight wasn’t the best gig, since sometimes their armor was so heavy and hot that they would suffocate in it and die, leaving them to be trampled by their own horses. This gave much insight to Mel’s own fate, or people who think like him. In trying to protect themselves, they end up suffocated in their own worry and doubt. They lock themselves up in the sheltered armor that eventually takes the life away from them. People like Laura; on the other hand desire to feel all the intensity of emotion. She wants to know the feelings are there, no matter how they are displayed. She wants to feel it all. All or nothing.

The meaning of true love never becomes clear, per say. That is the point. We are different and receive and give love in different ways. The only thing that is clearly defined is that love should be passionate. Towards the end of the night, Mel tells a story of two old patients that he had who were under severe conditions. They were a married couple. The husband has a mouth, nose, and eye-holes. Mel goes on to say that the old man was severely depressed even after hearing that his wife was going to live. He asked him why and the man said that it was because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel was astonished that the car accident wasn’t killing him, but the simple fact that he couldn’t see the woman he loved. He was dying of a broken heart. Love should be something we would die for or else, “Now what?” as Terri said in the end of the story. We could just eat or not eat, as Nick later on says in the table, pretend we feel love or not feel love at all. Which is the greater evil? Clinging on to love even if it hurts us or never truly engaging in love at all? This is what the story is really saying. We cannot place a guideline for love. It is not a sign; it is a symbol that is defined by what surrounds it. The question is: are we going to embrace love without inhibitions it or let it die out so that WE will not get hurt?