What We Talk About When We Talk About Love': Theme Analogy

Raymond Carver uses a literature style that enriches the portrayal of the themes of each short story he writes. Yet his style of work demonstrates a common crucial problem: the misinterpretation of the message his theory attempts to portray to this audience. This misinterpretation stems from Carver’ minimalist writing technique that is simple yet effective in his work. He uses this technique to provide the reader with little information, along with a glimpse of the desperate characters tackling their unstable relationships and profound emotions whose significances they cannot understand. As a result, this encourages the reader to search for the meaning behind the story. Carver recognizes his characters as helpless and shadowed by pain. Carver creates this style where a character’s silence is as significant as the gaps filled with words. In the short story “What We Talk About When We Are Talking About Love” Carver utilizes the first person point of view as a tool to strengthen the bond and reliance between the narrator and the reader. Likewise, in the story “Cathedral,” Carver again uses the first person technique. This essentially allows the reader to recognize both love and the difficulties of life that Carver depicts in these two stories. There are major similarities that outweigh the differences between the two short stories. These similarities include both the use of isolation in the two stories and the failure of language between the stories. In “what we talk about when we talk about love” alcohol works like a social lubricant that removes one’s self- consciousness and allows emotions to quickly emerge. First Isolation is commonly found in Carver’s short stories.

In “What We Talk About When We Are Talking About Love,” the couple isolates themselves from how they feel and do not allow themselves to feel the stress of their pasts. This is part of the reason why Carver introduced “gin” in the story, which is interpreted as alcohol. (alcohol works like a social lubricant that removes one’s self- consciousness and allows emotions to quickly emerge). It is evidently shown they need to “feel” each other in order to confirm they are really in love. The couple also finds it difficult to express this love in words. This symbolizes the end of the alcohol bottle. The alcohol runs out, just as the thoughts and on-going conversation follow. At this point, everyone seems to be isolated in his or her own world. This is shown when everyone stops speaking to one another. The character Nick comments, “I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart”. This is important because this quote shows the element of irony at the end of the story. It ends by hearing the heart beating, incapable of expressing words to the people they love, yet still alive and truly in love with each other. Alcohol also menaces the relationship between the characters and isolates their identities in the “Cathedral” In addition to alcohol, smoking is used as a device between the narrator and Robert, the “blind man” in “Cathedral.” The narrator is the most isolated character; he is imprisoned within himself and unable to voice his insecurities that seem to consume him. He hides his loneliness behind a shield of drugs and alcohol. Isolation is also present when the narrator feels that his wife is not including nor bringing his name up in conversations.

The narrator points out, “ I waited in vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips… But I heard nothing of that sort more talk of Robert”. Consequently, the narrator feels no connection in the beginning towards Roger, which also creates some jealousy. As the story progresses, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana releases the tension and increases male bonding, and finally the narrator’s superficial vision develops. The narrator becomes connected to Robert when cannabis is introduced. This is shown when he begins to appreciate the company of Robert, the narrator starts realizes how empty he is when he points out, “every night I smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and I hardly ever went to bed at the same time”. Connecting with the “blind man” allowed the narrator to face his identity and his own loneliness, and his mind unlocked new possibilities. This is similar to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Alcohol is used in order to create a bond between the friends around the table. When the narrator closes his eyes, Carver writes, “My eyes are still closed, I was in the house I knew that but I didn’t feel like I was inside anything”. Similar to Nick in the “Cathedral”, he is experiencing isolation around him. His eyes are closed, which brings back the idea of darkness and isolation, similar to the dark kitchen in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”

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Isolation continuously emerges with the theme of the failure of language In “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” the characters continuously try to define what the term love is. None of the characters are able to pin the idea down and end up failing. The use of physical intimacy is also added to replace the weak exchange of expressive language. The couple performs this many times. Carver writes, “I took Laura’s hand and raised it to my lips”. Another example shows through the character Nick. He pauses and is unable to express his feelings with words. Instead, Nick grabs her hand instead to try to prove he is in love. This indicates a weak performance of language throughout the story. This also indicates that the couple is still in their ‘honey moon phase,’ which is known as the phase where love is still new and wonderful. By the end of the conversation, Laura mentions that she is a hungry. Carver writes, “I’ll put out some cheese and crackers”. Terri responds but also sits there and did not act. This also proves the inability for the characters to communicate the feeling of love to each other. In “Cathedral,” language also fails.

This is shown when the narrator tries to describe to Robert, the blind man, what a cathedral appears to look like. Essentially the narrator fails, but near the end, similar to the couple in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” the stories use physical intimacy in place of words. When Robert and the narrator touch hands in order to draw and describe what a cathedral looks like, unlike the couple, there is some success through the intimacy, and they start to connect faintly at the end of the story. Furthermore, Carver may be potentially symbolizing that the narrator is also “blind” as he gets stuck in words describing to Robert cathedrals description. Carver uses similar techniques in both short stories to create his message to the audience. His effective use of minimalism is crucial for the audience to understand that there is more to the story than meets the eyes.

The combined display of irony and symbolism between the stories enriches the hidden meaning even more. The reader is led to understand this when comparing the two stories. The stories denote the failure of language and the idea of isolation within one’s self. Carver’s astonishing literature style crafted two different stories that are alike in ways of themes, but also different in ways that the readers figure out for themselves.