What We Talk About When We Talk About Love By Raymond Carver

In What We Talk About When We Talk About Love the theme is love and the difficulty to define the love. The story is mainly based on dialogues between two couples, which are Mel, Teresa, Laura and Nick. While they talked a lot, at the end of story, they did not come up with a clear definition about love. The language used in the story is easy to understand and catching up. In this essay, I will talk about author’s writing style and important symbolisms used in the story. Raymond Carver was a minimalist writer, whose stories were wrote in a sparse use of language and paired down prose (Brent, 2001). Most readers thought nothing happened in they story, but actually Carver had spoke enough for readers to understand the story. At the beginning of the story, it said “Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right.” When I first read the sentence, I did not think there was an implied meaning. However, after reading the whole story, it seems that Mel should be the one who knows what the love is since he is a heart doctor and he talked the most during the conversation.
When the conversation went along, Mel’s definition of love became more and more vague, maybe it was because of the alcohol or maybe he found himself could not come up with a specific definition when the topic went deep. This part also reflected the irony, because love is the connection and affection between two persons’ hearts. As a cardiologist, Mel should know better than any other else. Mel stated in the story “I learned my stuff, I’m a heart surgeon, but I’m just a mechanic” (Carver, 1981). Mel said he is just a mechanic, so love is hard to define and to be a heart doctor not necessarily means he should know love better than anyone