In the article “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, which was written by Raymond Carver in 1981, the author is mainly talking about the story from Mel McGinnis, who is at home with his wife Terri and their friends, Nick and Laura, are drinking gin and tonics and talking about love.
The first discussion is about Terri's ex husband, Ed. Ed is the guy she was with before Mel McGinnis. It is a sad story. She says, that night Ed beat her, he told her, "I love you, I love you, you bitch" while he pulled her around the room. Terri considers that what Ed felt for her was love. And then Terri continues with her story. He stalks Mel and Terri, at that time Mel was divorcing his ex wife and living together with Terri. It’s a really complicated situation. Ed gains knowledge of the true and kills himself with rat poison, but it doesn’t work well at first, finally he kills himself by shooting himself in his mouth. She feels scared during this time, however, she still thinks Ed loves her because he died for love. On the contrary, Mel points out that there is no relationship between love and killing himself and nobody know why he kills himself. The story of Ed is ends and the conversation move on to Laura and Nick’s story. They think they know what love is. Terri tells them to stop the sappy newlywed love, since the honeymoon is going to be over soon.
Let’s turn to Mel’s story. He gives a story of what happened in the hospital to show what true love is. A couple months ago, an old couple who had been in a car accident came into the hospital, Of course, they survived, but the man was badly injured. He is unable to turn his head after car accident, he feels so unhappy, because he will never look at his wife again, who is just beside him. Mel continues to explain the situation until the story is over. Mel looks depressed, Terri asks him if he needs a pill. He tells her that he just wants to call his kid. However, Terri points out that his ex-wife might pick up the phone. Mel gives up his idea. They keep drinking until the bottle is empty.
In the article, Terri thinks Ed kills himself it’s because of love. However, in my opinion, It’s not because of love make people crazy, people may have improper behavior in many situations.
Losing the domination of a woman may cause men to behave crazily and improperly. In the story, Terri said “When I left, he drank rat poison”(Carver). All kinds of crazy behaviors the text mentioned, can only illustrate the issue that Ed is afraid of losing her. He had already been crazy, it’s because of his instincts, his desires or unmet. For example, from the early society, in primitive societies, men have to go out for hunting and find the food for tribe while women are raising and educating their young generations at home. Men have higher social status than women in community, so men have more rights in society, and women are became a vessel of goods or property of men. If the property (women) are disappearing or leaving, it...
