Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Essay Example

Love, for many, is a very crucial subject to take into account. Relatively, it could be understood that because of the different understandings that people have on the real meaning of love, this supposedly simple word has become one of the most complex terms that apparently do not involve the emotional condition of feeling the meaning of the said word. Carver’s writing on What We Talk About When We Talk About Love specifically allows the condition of presenting love as something that merely involves emotion but also involves the condition of understanding that a person has towards another’s needs and feelings. In this reading Carver presents the different conflicts that are related to love and its existence in human relationships. Presented within the discussion that follows are the different themes and issues about love that has been presented in the story.

A particular theme of love presented in the story is its being elusive as a natural characteristic of the said matter. This nature of love is presented in the story as a specific elemental factor that defines love as a distinct factor that everyone wishes to have, everyone wishes to find and everyone wishes to enjoy. However because of the different twists and turns of life, such realization seems to be quite elusive. I do support this idea. Perhaps because of the idea that love has many meanings that it has become quite complex when it comes to a person being satisfied with the simple idea of finding someone who loves him. The reciprocation of emotional satisfaction between two people who tend to love each other is not that easy to acquire. Because of the involvement of the sacrifice of one’s own desires for the sake of balancing along with the emotional satisfaction of the other, love has been specifically defined in the story as something that has to be decided upon seriously, a matter that should be considered with one’s full control of the situation by which he or she becomes involved in another’s life. It is because of the fact that love is elusive in nature, people have become specifically desperate when they feel that they are not able to find the true love within t specific time that they have specified for themselves to take into account as part of their personal goals.

Another aspect about love that the story tries to define is its being abstract. Being abstract specifically means it cannot be fully defined by words nor any particular action that could define what love is. This, in a way, is factual as it does create a distinct indication on why love has been considered differently by different human individuals. I personally support this particular idea that the story suggests because I believe that people who love do not experience the same situations nor do they feel the same conditions of loving and being loved. I see that because of the distinct behavior that one has completely different from another, his or her rate of satisfaction differs largely from the others thus affecting the way that these individuals envision love and give meaning to it as part of their lives. Apart from behavior is that of one’s learning about what love is. Because one person is separately brought apart from another, thus is rooted on different values compared to another individual, love becomes an element that bridges all the differences, nevertheless, this particular aspect of emotion is not that easy to accomplish because the differences need to be successfully adjusted with first before any specific points of satisfaction is specifically realized.

One more aspect of love that is pointed out in the reading is that of its being shaped based on the beliefs and culture of a person. A person’s upbringing and social connection plays a great role on how he begins to see the real meaning of love. This is a true aspect of defining love’s complex meaning as one person [belonging to a specific race] may view love differently from another. For instance, someone who belong from the western regions realize love’s meaning at a more liberal manner while someone from the eastern regions may see the matter to be more conservative in nature. As a result, people from the west might be quite ‘showy’ when they say that they love another individual, while easterners might feel uncomfortable with such showy display of their emotions. Easterners might be more willing to define love in a more conservative manner that is specifically limited within the constraints of their cultural and traditional beliefs. Because of this particular emergence of difference among human individuals, people from different cultures who say that they are ‘in love’ with each other are often in need of adjusting not only to the being of their mate but to the condition of living and loving that the culture of their mate is specifically brought along with.

Another condition that defines what love is involves the inadequacy of language that is able to define the exact meaning of the complex feelings that love is actually based upon. No language could exactly provide a proper definition that would fit what love specifically means among people in general. Perhaps in context, love, is a situational condition of the heart that cannot be fully defined in general. People are able to realize what love is based on how they experience it, based on how they understand what it implies on their being and the specific satisfaction that they get from such emotion. Notably, it also involves the capacity of a person to understand is complexity as he experiences the devastation it brings once it becomes a point of failure. Overall, the inadequacy of language to define love is specifically because of the fact that love is considered to be a collection of different emotions intertwined together. The specific words that could describe what love is only depend on the person who is able to experience it. Basically, it is because of this that people develop different points of perception about love and how it specifically defines their being and that of the person that they shared the said emotion with.

Finally, love is defined in the story as something that could bind or break individuals who tend to experience its effects based on their own personal understanding on how love should be shared between them and the people they chose to love. Love is a condition of satisfaction that is prolonged through the distinct existence of other values such as understanding and adjustment and considerations between the people sharing the said point of emotion. When the said emotional satisfaction ends when one of the mates feel unsatisfied with the reciprocation of emotion used to exist between partners. This is the reason why marriage is not enough to define the love that two people have for each other; it is not enough to point out the reality of the said emotion and how the individuals feel its reality. One’s capacity to see what love is through adjusting himself or herself to fit with the being of the other partner so as to become satisfied within the emotion that they share.

Overall, it could be noted that in the story of Carver, he tried to present love based on the many aspects that defines a person’s understanding of the said emotion. Knowing that there are different complex issues about love that cannot be resolved by words of definition, Carver tried to present the different faces of love depending on the different situations that human individuals get involved with in relation to love and its application in the relationships that they develop among each other. Overall, it could be understood that love cannot be defined simply through the use of words. One must be able to experience how it feels to love and how to be loved by another individual or other individuals before he could actually say that he is able to understand what love is about. The complexity of love and the development of its meaning among people specifically identifies the condition of being and behavior that a person is able to share with another to be able to gain the chance of sharing themselves to other individuals thus gaining better meaning about their own lives; a matter that adds up to the worth of the life that each individual tries to survive with.

Works Cited

Carver, Raymond. Collected Stories. New York: Library of America, 2009. Note on the Texts, p. 999.

Weiner, Jonah (May 6, 2011). “Fledgling Filmmaker Casts Against Type“. The New York Times.

Charters, Ann, The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction.