The Meaning of Love in Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About

Raymond Carver’s "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" appears to make the case that it is possible to hate the thing you love. This is the crux of what Terri describes, at least, in her abusive relationship with Ed. Ed used to drag Terri around by the ankles and beat and say, “I love you, I love you, you bitch!” She believed he meant it—his love was real. The wrath, however, as Mel points out was not love; it could not be. The only explanation, therefore, is that it is possible to have two contradictory passions at once, competing in one’s will, even to the point that one destroys the thing one loves. Such is not a new theme in literature, at any rate. Shakespeare touched on it in Othello. Carver touches on it here in this story.

Sleevi (2012) contends that there are two versions of love—a violent one, and a kind one. Each demonstrates itself differently, but both have the same end goal—to be loved in return. This is evident in Carver’s story in the way the couples reach out to reassure and to be reassured in return: the way Mel reaches out to touch Terri’s cheek after he contradicts her about what love is; the way the narrator reaches out and touches the back of Laura’s hand to reassure her and to be reassured by her when they both speak their minds on the topic. There is a give-and-take, an action and reaction in the love concept. Even the act of talking about love is that way: there is no way to explain it or bring it up without having to receive some kind of push back in return. Mel contends the absolute ideal of love is different from what Ed displayed in his abuse of Terri, but Terri is not convinced.

She insists it was love because he was so desperate for her even as he abused her: he killed himself over her; drank rat poison, then shot himself. Mel insists he was disturbed—but it is quite possible that love can disturb people. Love has to be considered like a wave or an avalanche sometimes—something so powerful that it can overwhelm. Love of this sort, ungoverned by virtue, can destroy a person the same way a tsunami can wipe out a village. That appears to be what Carver shows happened with Ed. Mel will not admit it—he does not like to think that way; he prefers to think of love as something that engenders peace. But love of the sort that overwhelms those who are not ready for it also does happen. It is evident in many stories, as already noted: Wuthering Heights is another plum example of the kind of obsessive love that overwhelms (Taniyama, 2000).

Carver seems to be suggesting that in the end everyone is overwhelmed by love and the competing desire that accompanies it in the heart—because there is never just one desire in the heart, but competing desires, competing wills. That is the point Flannery O’Connor makes in Wise Blood. Here, in the story, even the narrator is overwhelmed and admits: “Eat or not eat. Or keep drinking. I could head right on out into the sunset…. It means I could just keep going. That's all it means” (Carver, 2014, p. 8). The next thing he knows, nobody is moving; everyone is wiped out from too much drink (no one has bothered to show any sort of restraint); and then all goes dark. Each of the characters comes up short—not really knowing what it means, this topic of love, which overwhelms and oppresses. Is it because the object of their love is inadequate? Augustine tried to get at this problem of love in his Confessions and concluded that people’s hearts are restless until they rest in God (Allen, 1985). Perhaps that is why there seems to be no real rest for Carver’s characters: they are trying to rest in their love of some thing—some object, some romance, some honeymoon, some earthly idea, some person—but for love to find its fullest reciprocation it has to be placed in love itself, which is God, according to Augustine. At any right, nothing in Carver’s story challenges Augustine’s thinking: Carver’s characters come up short, overwhelmed perhaps in a way by misplaced love, love on the run, love seeking but not fully finding, love looking but not knowing for what, love expressing but not knowing what it is saying.