Ann Beattie Is a Short Story Told

¶ … Ann Beattie is a short story told in a series of flashbacks. It is narrated by a woman remembering a winter she spent in a house with a former lover. The story is evocative and nostalgic, but also is filled with a sense of sorrow, regret, and foreboding. Even the actions the woman and her lover perform together, like painting a room, underline the transience of their united state. Beattie's narrator is afraid that the grapes of the wallpaper will come popping through the paint, undoing their paint job. A wild chipmunk runs lose through the house, and like the lovers, the chipmunk is a symbolic transgressor in the house, an outsider.

At the end of the story, when the narrator returns, she feels sorrow when she sees flowers popping up in the ground. Seasons change and people grow apart. The flowers should be seen as signs of new life, but in the reversal of the story's symbolism, cold symbolizes warmth (the love the narrator believed she possessed) and life symbolizes endings. The flowers, symbolizing spring, "couldn't compete" with the love the narrator felt for her ex-partner during the winter.

Very little of consequence happens in "Snow." What is all-important about the tale is the theme of lost love. Even the character of the woman is not particularly well-defined. However, almost anyone could relate to this story that has been in love with someone, and grieves over that lost love. Even though he or she knows it was not meant to be, and everything in the universe was telling him or her otherwise, the loss still stings. This would be a powerful story to read after breaking up with someone. It captures the importance of small things in the life of a relationship, and how they can seem of great significance afterward. They might seem meaningless to an outside observer, but small details can bring back haunting memories.

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"

"What We Talk about When We Talk about Love," by Raymond Carver is a shocking and unromantic tale. It depicts a discussion about the multifaceted nature of human love, in its ugly as well as its passionate forms. Mel, one of the characters, first presents a highly idealistic notion of love, which is immediately deflated by his wife, who talks about her abusive ex-husband who could only show love through cruelty. Mel's idealism is later shown to be a lie as he talks about his murderous feelings for his ex-wife. While the other married couple, the narrator Nick and his wife Laura, hope they will not fall into the negative behavior patterns of Mel and Terri, the fact that the two couples are drinking heavily together does not bode well for their relationships.

There are some indications in the story that true love is possible. Mel narrates an incident involving an elderly couple injured in a car crash. "Can you imagine? I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife." However, the overall impression about love the story leaves is more hopeless and cynical, perhaps because the characters seem unable to connect with one another on a deep and more meaningful level. The story is, after all, not about love. As its title suggests it is about what we are really talking about when we talk about love. The subject of love is brought up, not because Mel, Terri, Nick, and Laura want to communicate affection towards one another, but as a way of expressing their hidden aggressions and darkest secrets and fears.

"Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine"

Carol Shields' "Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine" is a story about the 'created' nature of love. In the story, the sign "Wendy is back!" In the window of a store causes the narrator to imagine what Wendy is like and to fall in love with his created image of Wendy. In this story, theme, rather than plot or character is what is important. The plot is nonexistent -- the story illustrates an illusion we often have, when our fantasy of a person is more vivid than the reality. This is often true of people who 'fall in love' with celebrities, or who project their own needs upon other people, rather than embrace the human perfections of real people. Having a relationship with an idealized figure is less frightening than having a relationship with a real person.

Shields' story seems particularly relevant today, when it is very easy to fall in love with people based upon information gleaned from the Internet. The ease of creating a false persona through words and suggestive images enables someone to 'love' the idea that the other person creates, rather than a true human being. The story does not inspire the reader to have a favorite character but rather to squirm uncomfortably as well as to laugh about the behavior exhibited by the narrator, as it rings all to true with his or her own behavior.

"Say Yes"

Tobias Wolff's "Say Yes" portrays a couple having a seemingly inconsequential argument. The wife and the husband argue over whether people of different races and ethnicities should marry. Eventually, their conversation deteriorates into a quarrel as to whether the husband would have married the wife if she had been black. The husband is portrayed as an insensitive boor who is proud that he helps out with the housework. "A few months earlier he'd overheard a friend of his wife's congratulate her on having such a considerate husband, and he thought, I try. Helping out with the dishes was a way he had of showing how considerate he was." However, he expresses uncomfortably racist attitudes.