Numerous Opinions on Love in Raymond Carver’s Novel

The text offers a background check on Raymond Carver’s personal life, focusing on the nature of his love life and how it affected him psychologically. In the initial pieces of the text, the author associates his heavy smoking and drinking as the outcome of his divorced life.

First Impression

What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, part of a series of stories (and the main story) in the novel that is also given the same title. Upon reading the first parts of the text, one does not fail to encounter the elusive nature of love, in spite of the numerous efforts of the characters to define it.

As such, there the impression of love being persistent and assumes many forms as revealed by the characters in the text, for instance, there is a couple who survived death while travelling by car, and the story assumes a confusing direction when in towards the end, the man is unable to spend time with his wife or even see her. In the much references and the iconic title story, the author manages to establish a reputation as one of the most successful and celebrated short-story authors in United States history. He is a haunting meditation on loss, love, and companionship, as one struggle to find his way in the dark (Carver 301). The gentleman is called McGinnis and he is in his middle 40s and is a cardiologist who is married to Terri or Teresa, whom they reside within Albuquerque.

Characters

The story revolves around four friends, including Laura, Nick, Mel, and Teresa, and the setting is in Mel’s homestead, around a circular table that is filled with ice and placed at the center of the room. There is a bottle full of gin inside. Mel is described as rangy and tall with soft hair that is also curly. On the other hand, Teresa is Mel’s second wife and is slim with an attractive face, brown hair, and dark eyes. Laura and Nick are their friends, while the former is 38 years old and plays the role of the narrator; the latter is 35 and works as a legal secretary.

The characters start to indulge in conversations about love. Teresa has gone through an abusive relationship that is derived from the love of his former boyfriend, Ed. Accordingly, he “loved her so much to the point that he tried to kill her.” He dragged her around the living room and beat her up such that he injured her ankles. Despite all that Terri told him, Mel refused to agree that Ed was driven by pure love.

There are a lot of symbols used in the story, for instance, the scorching afternoon sun represented a presence in the room, the generosity and spacious light that ushers in ease. Secondly, the heart symbolizes love. The central question is whether the audience could get clinched further because the title is not scribbled in a young adult. Thirdly, gin is used as a clock in this story because Ed’s story comes to an end when the first bottle of gin is exhausted. What is more, the story of the elderly couple comes to a halt when the second bottle of gin is finished (310).

Conclusion

What We Talk about When We Talk about Love offers numerous descriptions of love from the points of views of five people, including Mel, Teresa, Ed, Nick, and Laura. Before Teresa met Mel, she underwent a series of abuses under her former relationship and shares with the rest. Mel thinks that she has not yet been shown true love and strives to do so.