Alcoholism Explored in What We

Alcoholism Explored in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"

More often than not, art imitates life and this can be seen in Raymond Carver's short story, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." The characters in this story are moderate to heavy drinkers that can put away two bottles of gin and still stand up. What we know from Carver's life allows us to piece together that some of the characters in his stories are created from very real circumstances in his life. Carver's experience with alcoholism allows him to write about it from an experienced perspective. Mel becomes obnoxious as he gets drunk and everyone becomes numb. Days and nights becoming a wasted, numbing blur is the message Carver conveys in this story about love.

Carver can write about the power of alcohol because he battled alcoholism for years. Joe Nordgen asserts, "For the first half of the 1970s, writing, teaching, and increased drinking were the shaping events in Carver's life" (Nordgen). Nordgen goes on to say that while Carver was "drawing praise" (Nordgen) for his creative endeavors, he "met John Cheever and drank his way toward legendary status" (Nordgen). According to Baird Shuman, Carver admits that he and John Cheever were "drinking so heavily during their tenure at the Iowa Writers' Workshop that they did not once take the covers off their typewriters while they were there. In 1977 Carver was hospitalized several times, and in the following year he separated room his wife Maryann." (Shuman 257). Things did not exactly turn around for Carver fast enough and he struggled financially and after becoming unemployed, he "turned to more self-destructive drinking. Like the people in his stories, Carver was among the dispossessed" (Nordgen). Carver gave up drinking in June of 1977 and his personal and professional life began to "brighten" (Shuman 257). Carver's characters often have "too little money and too much to drink; they have trouble holding jobs and trouble holding their marriages together" (259). What we see here is that the abuse of alcohol only makes things worse. Ironically, when alcoholics drink, they are attempting to make things better.

This can be seen in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," as we see Mel and Terri struggle to find some sort of happiness to cling to as they watch Nick and Laura in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. Mel attempts to describe love as he saw it with the old couple in the hospital. Robert Rebein notes, "Hovering over all this talk is the characters' histories of failed relationships and the possibility -- on the face of it, a very real one for Mel and Terri -- that their current marriages won't last" (Rebein 31). Liz Brent states that Carver utilizes figurative speech in the story to highlight certain aspects of characters. She adds, "Mel is an alcoholic, and a vessel is an object designed to contain something . . . Through this play on words, the connection is made to Mel's use of alcohol . . . As his means of protective armor against emotional injury" (Brent). She goes on to state, "The figurative language combining the use of alcohol, as contained in a vessel, or the swallowing of a pill . . . is also expressed in Terri's explanation that her abusive ex-husband, Ed, drank rat poison when she left him" (Brent). "Like Mel's consumption of alcohol . . . Ed's consumption of rat poison is his own self-destructive attempt to medicate his own emotional pain in the face of his 'love' for Terri" (Brent). Brent also states that while Ed was an abusive man that that had severe problems, the same could be said of Mel if he did not at least attempt to be careful with Terri. Ed's drinking turned him into a monster and Terri's reaction to his teeth looking like fangs emphasizes this. From this, Brent finds a connection between Ed and Mel. She states, "There is a suggestion that, just as Ed's drinking of rat poison in an attempt to cure his emotional pain turns him into a fanged beast, so Mel's drinking of alcohol in an attempt to cure his own emotional pain may be turning him into a beast, posing a threat of danger to Terri" (Brent). From this perspective, we can see that alcohol often drives people to do things in the name of love. Terri thinks that Ed did love her but alcohol made things worse between them because of alcohol's affect on the central nervous system. When Terri asks Mel is he is drunk, he becomes defensive because he realizes that something about his personality must be changing. In other words, he is getting drunk and behaving drunk but does not want to admit it and continues to drink to cover his emotions.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the story in relation to drinking is the fact that the characters are drinking as if it were second nature to them. They are drinking gin and it as if this is something they do every day. The gin and the water "kept going around" (Carver 170) the table and the coupes drink freely, conversing as if everything is normal. They are pouring gin into their glasses as if it is iced tea. When Terri finishes the last of the first bottle of gin, she shakes the bottle and Mel simply gets up from the table, gets another bottle of gin and they proceed. As Mel pours everyone a new glass of gin, no one stops him and no one seems to be pathetically drunk. It is worth noting, however, that Mel does get drunk and it becomes evident in his behavior. It is safe to assume that Mel is a character that Carver might have molded from his experiences with alcohol. While no one in this story gets sloppy drunk to the point that they pass out, Mel does exhibit drunken, loud, obnoxious behavior and the result of this behavior is nothing.