Not so the careful reader, for a while at least, because Carver dramatically juxtaposes varieties of experience that, when seen together, sharpen their lines of difference and no longer pass unquestioned for love.
This conversation about, as Mel puts it, “what we talk about when we talk about love” is many-layered, however. About identifying with America’s underclass, Carver said: “They’re my people. The narrator describes her as “easy to be with.” Nick’s depiction of Laura is based on the continuing “honeymoon” tone of their relationship.
Although they are soft-spoken and civil on the surface, they express a deep-seated anger and resentment toward one another. Yet while much of the story is taken up with dialogue, the communication between the members of each couple is indicated by their physical gestures, their silences, and, most of all, what the words that remain upspoken.Carver’s characters have often been divorced at least once and are often remarried. His characters almost universally lack the ability to articulate their true feelings or to effectively make use of language in conducting their relationships.
Mel is an alcoholic, and a vessel is an object designed to contain something, usually in reference to a liquid, as a cup or chalice. That interpretation would devalue her.Up to a point it is advantageous for Mel to see more clearly than Terri. Welcome to Albuquerque New, Mexico, and the home of heart doctor Mel McGinnis and his wife Terri. Mel opens another bottle of gin. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is a short story of two married couples, Mel and Terri and Nick and Laura, who engage in a conversation one evening about the meaning of real love.
He wants to know what happened to the love he felt for his first wife.
SOURCES The narrator says that his cardiologist friend, Mel McGinnis, is talking. Me gustaría no tener que mirar.” Mel is a cardiologist, a doctor who operates on people’s hearts. Ewing Campbell. Some couples are just beginning their relationships, some are locked in unfortunate marriages, and others are divorced. like each other and enjoy one another’s company.” When Laura is asked whether she would call Ed’s feelings toward Terri love, for example, she says, ’”who can judge anyone else’s situation?,’” and Nick tells us that “I touched the back of Laura’s hand. Terri says that she will ’”put out some cheese and crackers,”’ but she makes no move to do so. Four people sit around a table talking about love. Some critics have criticized Carver’s ambiguous endings as cliche and unsatisfying to the reader. But of course that is not all there is to the story. “Now what?” Terri responds. Nick says, as background information, that Mel spent time in a seminary before going to medical school. As the story opens, Mel is talking as Nick, from whose perspective the story takes place, provides some description of the scene in Mel's kitchen. CRITICAL OVERVIEW I picked up Laura’s hand. Mel explains that, one day, the old man explained to him in tears that he was upset that, although he and his wife’s beds were next to each other in the hospital room, he could not turn his head to see her face, because of his bandages.
Terri says that before she lived with Mel, she lived with a man named Ed who tried to kill her because he loved her so much.
Mel, the narrative’s “heart specialist,” tells his wife and the newlywed couple they have invited over for drinks that they should feel “ashamed” when they act like they know what they are talking about when they talk about love. Mel tells Laura that if their situations were different, he’d fall in love with her. In 1966, Carver earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the Carver and Maryann separated in 1976 and he was hospitalized for his alcoholism four times between 1976 and 1977. Laura remarks that she’s starving, and Terri says she’ll serve a snack, but she stays in her seat. In life though, just as in literature, moments of the most vivid clarity soon fade, leaving us to fall back on signs and symbols to guide us in love or in life.“Nothing happens.
. He primarily plays the part of observer, as his contributions to the conversation are minimal. It was warm, the nails polished, perfectly manicured. It is too extraordinary to explain and all attempts to do so are destined to fail. 86-87, 108-11, 113. What follows is a subtle but telling bit of dialogue:“That’s right,” Mel said. However, as Mel becomes drunker, the atmosphere of subtle but distinct menace seems to pervade the entire room, leaving the two couples sitting in the dark in silence.There is a sense that the dark underbelly of “real love” has been exposed, and the characters are left in utter despair, unable to move or speak.A central theme of Carver’s stories is communication between people, especially people in relationships. Mel thinks love is spiritual and says he used to be in the seminary.