What We Talk About When We Talk About Love:
1. Use a personal definition of love and analyze one of the character’s definitions of love in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. Do they contradict one another? Complement one another? What do you think most contributes to one’s worldview in terms of what love is and what we ought to do with it?
I define love as feeling that is created through communication, caring, understanding, passion, supporting, and trusting one another. Some one cannot just say they are in love with some because it is not just a word but an action and feeling. The character Terri has a different view of love. Terri was in an abusive relationship and says that all the abuse were acts of love. Her ex would beat her and while he beat her, he would tell her he loved her. After two attempts of suicide, Ed, her ex, shot himself. The reason for his attempts at suicide were because Terri had left him. Terri sees that as acts of love as well, he killed himself because he loved her. Our definitions contradict each other because Terri sees love as something that involves violence. There also seems to be no communication or feelings that showed he cared for her because he was always angry and beating her.
3. Is this story optimistic or pessimistic about true love? Is the old couple a positive or a negative example of true love? What about Nick and Laura? What about Ed? Could you argue that he was in love?” (Making Literature Matter 685)
Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is optimistic about true love. Each characters stories about love shows that they believe love does exist and it can be a doorway into what they want love to be like for them. The couple can be a mix of both positive and negative examples of true love. It is wonderful that the old man was so in love with his wife that all he wanted was to see her with his again, on the negative side, he was depressed. True love doesn’t come with depression. Love can be a happy feeling and also sometimes a sad feeling for reasons but to feel so depressed because he couldn’t see her yet can show people that it is a sad thing. Nick and Laura’s story is a positive example because they have just sort begun their new lives and they have good things to look forward to. Ed is a negative example of true love because his actions do not justify what he did. He could have very deep inside of himself really did love Terri and he couldn’t take the fact that she was gone and felt guilty about what he did but when someone is in love they don’t beat them. You can say that he was in love but not truly in love because he really didn’t show it. He could have had other problems and that kept him from truly being in love.
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Hello Marlyn,
ReplyDeleteHow are you doing? I hope that you are well, and that you had a good weekend. You have a really good post; I enjoyed reading it. I would like to comment on question number three.
Discussion Question #3:
You make some really good points about love in this posting. I thought that this story was very interesting. Each character had different definitions of love. Take Terri, for example. She felt strongly that Ed did love her, even though he beat the living daylights out of her, and said "I love you, I love you," while beating her. If this is not an example of negative love, than I do not know what is. :-0
However, I do believe the older couple is an example of positive love. While the two of them were in the hospital after their horrible accident, the man's heart was breaking because he could not see his beloved wife: "Well, the husband was very depressed for the longest while. Even after he found out the wife was going to pull through, he was still very depressed. Not about the accident, though. I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no, it wasn't the accident exactly but it was because he couldn't see her through his eye-holes. He said that was what making feel so bad" (qtd. in Schilb and Clifford 683). As can be seen from this piece of evidence from the story, the man truly loved his wife, and even though he became depressed at the fact that he could not see her, he was depressed because he loved her so, so, so, so, much and wished that she was okay and that he could see that she was getting well. That is a beautiful love. As can be seen from this story, there are many definitions of love that people have; love does not have one universal definition that everyone accepts.
Thanks so much for the read, Marlyn. God Bless, and have a good upcoming week! :-)
Sincerely,
Jillian