No difference between a Knight and abuser?

In Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," Carver depicts a middle-aged man named Mel, who believes he has enough authority over the subject to declare, that love is cut and dry. Such as, he believes Ed to be a bad man, who could have never possibly loved Terri, becuase of his violent nature. Mel has a very respectible understanding of love, when he declares it to be "that impulse that drives you to someone special" (133), yet he believes that love can easliy come and go from one's life. He is under the belief that if one were a Knight they would have the ultimate protection from heartbreak because they were, "pretty safe with all that armor" (135). However, even this dream is crashed when Nick abrubtly states,

"But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They'd even have heart attacks if it got to hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere they were to tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes"... "Thats right" said Mel "Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love." (136)

Ultimatley revealing that whether your a crazy man like Ed or a portected Knight in Shinning Armor, you are diseptible to danger- whether thats a broken heart leading you to suicide or overcompensating and wearing to much armor; one stil suficates. Which leads him to drink more and more to avoid the painful realization that love is dangerous and there is no way to protect yourself from heartbreak.

Therefore, where does Mel go from this understanding? Is love really dangerous?

The Art of Communication

"They never talked about the sex... saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one shot thing. Nobody's business but ours" (262).

This passage comes just after Ennis and Jack's relationship turns sexual. Both men find them selves denying the fact, that their relationship is not "normal" among friends, colleges and men. Since they never speak about their feeling and the situation, neither man knows what the relationship means. Especially, at the end of summer, when they finish the job, and go home without either man expressing his desire to the other about maintaing a relationship. Dating and sex are already complicated, but then add two straight men (one whom is engaged) and their lack of communication into the mix, and it makes for a disastrous outcome. This single-handedly ruined their lives, ultimately leading both men to live unhappy lives apart from one another.

Do you think if Jack and Ennis had established their relationship early on during their first summer, they would have been able to maintain their relationship, while live a "good life together" (277)?

"But I think what you're saying is that love is an absolute."

In "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," Carver pushes the expectations and comforts of the reader. The story is centered on two couples, and very different opinions on love which the couples discuss over drinks one afternoon.

Love is both the most difficult and complex emotion we have. As a child, we're taught of the different basic loves: familial love, friendship love, romantic love. We all have a picture of what love is, what it should be like. This picture is often very different from reality.

In the story, Mel's wife describes an abusive relationship from her past. Mel refutes, saying that that type of relationship could never be love; however, Terri is convinced that it was a form of love. When asked if the behavior of the abusive man sounded like love, the narrator responds:

"I'm the wrong person to ask," I said. "I didn't even know the man. I've only heard his name mentioned is passing. I wouldn't know. You'd have to know the particulars. But I think what you're saying is that love is an absolute." (129)

While reading this story, the reader almost innately sides with Mel, assuming that such a love could not be love at all. As the story progresses, however, Carver's core argument which I believe to be that love is not an absolute puts the reader in the uncomfortable position of reconsidering just what this basic emotion is and means.

My question for class is: Can love be sick, and still be love?

The Dialogue of Love

In the short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,"Raymond Carver illustrates two couples interactions and their discussion about love. Terri describes her past relationship with an abusive partner as being truly loving. Her current partner, Mel, cannot understand Terri's reasoning behind her belief that her ex-partner, Ed, truly loved her.

"He kept saying,"I love you, I love you, you bitch." He went on dragging me around the living room. My head knocking on things"(128).

As a reader, you automatically side with Mel and cannot see how this is a display of love, but Terri is convinced saying "But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me" (129). This relationship and the reactions of the other characters symbolize the convoluted and twisted nature love can take. No character can give an assured description of what they think love is, besides Terri and her obvious dark answer. Terri's description of her situation represents the empty dialogue that resonates between the characters throughout the story that somehow brings them together while also forcing them apart.

The characters toast to "to true love," and Mel attempts to describe "what real love is,"but I'm not convinced any character in the story has truly experienced or can explain what love is (132). Over the course of the story, dialogue bounces between the characters, dancing around the fact that none of them know or can articulate what love is.


Is love something that can be effectively described or merely just felt? What character gives the best explanation or display of love in the story?

Superficial Love

"For an answer, I took Laura's hank and raised it to my lips. I made a big production out of kissing her hand. Everyone was amused." (132)

This moment sheds light on a superficial yet standard form of what love should be. At the surface this physical expression of touch is merely a public gesture of affection. Raymond Carver uses the phrase "big production" to argue this superficial image of love. The argument is setup in a intricate fashion to entertain the reader with different perspectives on love. One could consider his reason for kissing her hand was because people were watching, in a sense it is all a show. Another would argue it was out of pure affection. Carver wants to scuff under the skin of society by showing how love could be just a "big production" to some couples. Indeed "everyone was amused" by it.  

Is love superficial? 

Love Actually

"Laura is a legal secretary. We'd met in a professional capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship. She's thirty-five, three years younger than I am. In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another's company. She's easy to be with." (Carver 131)

Mel, Terri, Nick, and Laura present the reader with a discourse on the ambiguity and depth of true love and resulting consequences of such. It is interesting to note the extreme contrast in romantic beginnings each couple comes from, giving way to the many roles love can take in one's life. The whole story circles around the true purpose of love and its concrete definition in a real-world sense, but no single character can give a full filling answer. The whole story feels me with an uneasy feeling because no single conclusion is brought forth other than the realization that love is significantly more complicated than thought. Nick finds love to be an entity separate from emotional and physical attraction, implying love should be easy and smooth-sailing. Then again, if relationships and love were so easy to abide to, wouldn't everyone be in a relationship? His reasoning for their marriage and love is a list of simplistic qualities alienated from love as a whole. Love goes hand in hand with good company and attraction. Without either, love cannot survive in a relationship, as neither love nor relationships last easily. Mel's description of the elderly couple's accident seems to be the only accurate description of love, while Terri's prior relationship can so easily be deemed domestic violence. Then again, her ex had such devotion to his love for her, he wouldn't live without it…literally. Each character provides insight to the possible depths love dives into, giving way to the ultimate message that love has no true bounds or means. The whole framework behind love is so ambiguous, it falls to the perception of each person differently, giving way to no real limitation or definition on love. At the end of the day, love is in the eye of the beholder. 

Is the idea of love true to its form or is it commercialized and molded to what society finds true love to be, restricted to societal pressures and influence? Why so?

These People Don't Know What Love Is

In "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", two couples spend a of day drinking and trying to decipher the meaning of love. It was a bit hard to identify an overall big moment, and instead I found what could best be called mini moment's. One such moment was at the beginning when Nick, "....encircled the broad wrist with my fingers, and I held her (129)." This sentence came right after Terri told everyone about her abusive ex-husband and insisted that her ex-husband lover her. It stood out to me because it felt that the way Nick decided to hold her wrist, instead of her hand was a way of showing an act of possession, more then being a sweet gesture. Another instance of the relationship that can be seen between Nick and Laura is how he comment's on how," In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy one another's company. She's easy to be with" (131). Why he said this confused me greatly because in order to be truly in love, you should already like the person and enjoy their company or else what would be the point of being with that person? It almost  made the relationship between them seem shallow. As for Terri and Mel, I could not decide if they still had their so called love between them or not due to the dialogue becoming confusing as more alcohol was consumed. Mel out of all of them seemed to think that he knew the most about love and yet with his failed marriage and his desire for his ex- wife to be killed by bee's I feel that perhaps he knew not one bit more then the other's.The fact that Mel was a heart surgeon but didn't know how the heart or love worked was also greatly ironic. Terri on the other hand only knew love in form of abuse, and it was sad to read as she said,"...Sure,sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there, Mel. Don't say there wasn't" (129). From what can be seen by this, it seem's that she in no way, despite having a better relationship with Mel, has come to terms emotionally with what she was put through. Alcohol of course was one of the biggest part's of the story and it served to keep the conversation going and loosening tongues as in Mel's case.

Questions: What are the varying other opinion's on the relationships between these two couples? What was the significance of the ending?

The Dangers of Love

 Mel believes he has authority over the subject to declare, what love is and what love isn't. Such as, he declares Ed to be a heartless man, who never loved Terri, because of his violent nature. Mel is also under the belief that if one were a Knight they would have the ultimate protection from heartbreak, because Knights are, "pretty safe with all that armor" (135). However, this ideal is debunked when Nick abruptly states,

"But sometimes they suffocated in all that armor, Mel. They'd even have heart attacks if it got too hot and they were too tired and worn out. I read somewhere they were too tired to stand with all that armor on them. They got trampled by their own horses sometimes"... "That’s right" said Mel "Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love" (136).

Nicks graphic statement ultimately reveals, that whether one is a crazy man like Ed or a protected Knight in Shining Armor, one is still susceptible to danger, when it comes to love. Which leads Mel to drink more to avoid the painful realization, that love is dangerous and there is no way to protect oneself from heartbreak.

Therefore, do you agree that this story serves to warn against the deadly powerfulness of love?

Something to Talk About

Having read Carver's "Cathedral" a few years ago, I was already aware of his style of writing that makes readers feel as if they are present in the room while conversations take place. I was not disappointed with this story. Raymond Carver's short story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is so deeply packed with meaning that I find it difficult to choose one quote to discuss. Themes of varying kinds of love fill these few pages so thoroughly that one cannot unpack it all in a brief blog.

In this story, Mel, notably a cardiologist, (heart surgeon) shares his views on love with his wife of four years, Terri; the narrator, Nick; and his newlywed wife of over a year, Laura. Their talk takes place over massive amount of alcoholic beverages at Mel's house. "'What do any of us really know about love?' Mel said. It seems to me we're just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do...I must have loved my first wife too...now I hate her guts...What happened to that love?'"(132-133). For Mel, love is ephemeral and disposable like a razor that gets dull. When it cuts you, you just throw it out and grab a new one. Mel covers the gamut of love in his discourse much the same way we did as we described love in our last class.
According to Mel's wife, Terri, love is obsession, as her ex, Ed tried to kill her and later committed suicide for love. Nick and Laura represent young love, fresh, new and idealistic. Terri and Mel's love is chilly and fading as they are superficially kind to one another, but are seething underneath. Finally, Mel talks about the elderly couple in an accident. The elderly man is devastated because his bandages prevent him from gazing into his wife's eyes. This is the demonstration of love to be emulated, a love that reveres and adores and stands the test of time. This is the love that is missing from the heart of Mel, the heart surgeon who medicates his love deficiency with alcohol, hoping for a cure.

Love Poition

"It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man - then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood." (10)

Liquor plays an important role in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. The townspeople love it as well as Cousin Lymon, who enjoys the company and attention that the liquor brings in the cafe. I found this interesting since liquor is usually associated with substituting sadness for bliss, then sooner or later the effect wears off and back to sadness.

Is McCullers making some kind of similarity between liquor and love? Would this story have the same impact if food, another thing that can bring someone happiness, or anything else were used to bring people together? Is there any connection between the description of Amelia's whisky and the characters?

Unrequited Love

“Through the open door the crowd could see her sitting at her desk, her head in the crook of her arm, and she was sobbing with the last of her grating, winded breath.  Once she gathered her right fist together and knocked it three times on the top of her office desk, then her hand opened feebly and lay palm upward and still.”

One of McCuller’s running themes throughout the story is unrequited and isolated love.  McCuller depicts the less relished side of love by subjecting her characters Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy to a doomed love that is unreciprocated by their beloved.  While unrequited love leads Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy to a life of lawless action, it leads Amelia to an even more isolated life forever haunted by heartbreak.  This section in the novel is especially important because it marks the moment in which Amelia relinquishes her strength and pride which made her both feared and revered by the townspeople.  Before, her pain could only be seen by a flicker in her eyes but now her indifference to the open door shows she is broken to the point where she can no longer hide her anguish.  Her last hand gesture conveys to the reader that her fight and vigor has fled and in its place has settled the perpetual aches of an unrequited love.          

Why did Amelia, whose strength and independence was at one point notable, allow herself to make such an emotional investment into Cousin Lymon giving him the power to bring her to ruins?  

Lover and Beloved: The Chorus to The Ballad of The Sad Cafe

"First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons-- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow, every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. " (25)

This passage is key because it outlines the nature of the three main relationships of the story: the relationship between Miss Amelia and Marvin Macy, the relationship between Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon, and the relationship between Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy. We see in each of these relationships that there is in fact a lover and a beloved. Thus in this passage and throughout the story Carson McCullers demonstrates a belief that the concept of love is defined  and created by inequality. As the story plays out, we watch the way the dichotomy of "lover" and "beloved" brings distress to each person involved, and how it causes irrational behavior. McCullers's idea of love is not one of health, nor of happiness, but of continuous struggle.

Discussion Question:
How does the role of "lover" or "beloved" manifest itself in the behavior of each character as they exist in each role?

Opposites Attract

"There is a type of person who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings. Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children, an instinct to establish immediate and vital contact between himself and all things in the world. Certainly the hunchback was of this type" (20).

 The relationship between Miss Amelia, the hunchback, and Marvin Macy is that of a love triangle. While  the "love" is not always romantic, each character is allured by, or is drawn to, the "oppositeness" of another character. For example, Miss Amelia develops love for the hunchback because because he is everything she is not. His social and child-like personality paired with his simple mischeviousness nicely compliments her need for oder. Similarly, Cousin Lymon finds excitement in Marvin Macy because his character appeals to his interest in crime. While I'm skeptical to touch on the relationship between Marvin Macy and Miss Amelia, I think Marvin's interest in Amelia stems from her orderly life. She grew up in a nice home and has a lot going for her, yet she also has a "badass" side to her. I feel that Marvin, a hard criminal, is drawn to her ability to balance these traits, something he is unable to do.

Why do you think Marvin Macy is initially drawn to Miss Amelia?