32 pages • 1 hour read
Raymond CarverA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
On the surface, the story appears to be nothing more than four friends sitting around a table, chatting. Although Nick is the narrator, he barely speaks, and the reader learns next to nothing about him. Instead, he presents the events of the afternoon, which center on Mel and Terri’s macabre anecdotes about love. Nick is an impartial observer; he does not make any specific judgments or comments. The banal plot is an example of Carver’s literary style, where he provides a “slice of life,” almost as if the reader is voyeuristically watching people go about their ordinary routines. There is no action or change of setting, and the story is predominantly dialogue, apart from a few descriptions by Nick about the changing light or the characters’ behavior. The story’s ending is an example of ambiguity because there is no clear resolution. Instead, Carver’s use of subtext allows readers to think more deeply about the nature of communication and love. Through the principal character of Mel McGinnis, Carver thematically explores The Inability to Define Love and how Talking About Love Is Ineffectual. The motif of light and dark underscores these themes and reflects the characters’ steady progression toward silent uncertainty.
At the onset, sunlight pours in through the window. Mel and his wife, Terri, spend the afternoon in their Albuquerque kitchen with their friends, Nick and Laura, drinking gin and talking about different types of love. Mel’s kitchen is symbolic of the characters’ inability to change. Terri’s former partner, Ed, verbally and physically abused her. However, she believes that his violent actions were an expression of genuine love: “[He] loved her so much he tried to kill her” (126). Tensions appear between Mel and Terri when he tells her that Ed did not display real love. In having spent five years studying theology before becoming a heart surgeon, Mel believes that love is spiritual rather than physical. Mel asks Nick and Laura about their views on the subject, but Nick says he doesn’t know enough about Ed to comment. However, he does say that Mel sees love as an “absolute.” Laura doesn’t believe she can judge anyone else’s situation and refuses to be drawn into condemning Ed’s behavior or Terri’s view that the intensity of his feelings proves the depth of his love.
Terri doesn’t know how they got on to this topic, even though she was the one to bring it up. This suggests that she is trapped in a toxic loop of behavior, where she returns obsessively to the past in an attempt to make sense of it or to get others to validate her interpretation. When she finally broke up with Ed, he tried to kill himself by drinking rat poison. After he found out that she started seeing Mel, he stalked them, bought a .22 pistol, and phoned Mel at the hospital to threaten him. Mel and Terri lived like frightened “fugitives” (126) as they tried to avoid Terri’s ex. As a doctor, Mel understands the ephemeral nature of life. He bought a gun for protection and wrote his will, telling his brother that if anything happened to him, it would be because of Ed. However, Ed shot himself, and Mel was on duty when he arrived. Ed lived for three days, and to Mel’s chagrin, Terri stayed by his side. Laura, detecting that the couple’s relationship is founded on competition, asks, “Who won the fight?” (129). Terri maintains that Ed’s love must have been real because he died for love. Once again, Mel disagrees with her.
The first bottle of gin is empty, so Mel gets another one. Alcohol is a key symbol in the text, representing the communion of friendship and discourse. However, the motif of drinking alcohol signifies the characters’ inability to understand each other and agree on the definition of love. Carver juxtaposes Mel and Terri’s relationship with “newlyweds” Nick and Laura. After Terri’s somber tale, Laura says that she and Nick “know what love is” (130). Nick doesn’t say anything in return and instead makes a great show of kissing her hand. This action undercuts the notion of romantic love and emphasizes the detachment of the characters from their emotions and from one another. This detachment is evidenced in Nick’s description of meeting Laura and the qualities he admires in her:
Laura is a legal secretary. We’d met in a professional capacity. Before we knew it, it was a courtship […] In addition to being in love, we like each other and enjoy each other’s company. She’s easy to be with (129).
Terri asks how long they have been married and when she hears that it’s a year and a half, says tartly, “Wait awhile” (130). Terri is a foil to Laura. Carver juxtaposes Laura’s optimism with Terri’s biting cynicism, underscoring that the characters have differing perspectives on love. Ironically, both couples toast to love even though it is clear they are unable to agree on how to define real love.
As the afternoon sun “enchants” the room with “spacious light of ease and generosity,” Mel interjects his doubts: “What do any of us really know about love?” (131). He then lists different forms: physical love, carnal love, and sentimental love. He questions where love goes after a marriage ends and wonders how love can turn to hate. He believes that it is possible to love more than one person genuinely. Terri asks if he’s drunk, and he thinks she’s criticizing him. Laura says that they all love Mel, and he agrees that they’re all friends. Both Terri and Mel pick up their glasses, signaling their respective discomforts.
The tension between Mel and Terri rises, and he quietly tells her to “shut up.” Given all the antagonism in the room, it is injudicious that Mel returns to the subject of violence. He moves the narrative to an elderly couple he attended after a road accident. This is ostensibly so that he can provide an example of his idea of perfect love, but at the same time, he frames this in a negative way by saying that “it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love” (132). The convoluted syntax highlights his increasing intoxication as well as the continuing inability to define love. A drunk teenage driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, caused the accident. Mel explains in detail how the elderly couple was seriously injured, and Terri jokes about the importance of wearing seat belts. Mel and Terri testily profess their love for one another, even though this is hardly said in an affectionate manner. Mel continues with his story. The couple survived the accident but recovered in full-body plaster casts. Mel was concerned about the man’s increasing depression, which he discovered was the result of the husband not being able to see his wife.
When they almost finish the second bottle of gin, the couples talk about going to a local restaurant. Mel insists that they can’t leave until they polish off the remaining alcohol. Mel wishes he could return as a knight: “You were pretty safe wearing all that armor. […] No drunk teenagers to tear into your ass” (134-35). Although Mel believes knights to be invulnerable in their armor, Nick points out that knights were actually susceptible to heart failure due to the armor’s constrictions. Once again, Mel shows himself concerned with the fragile line between life and death and the impossibility of holding on to anything forever. He gets cross when Terri corrects his use of English and says that if he didn’t love his wife so much, he’d fall in love with Laura and carry her off. Terri wants him to finish his story so they can go out to dinner. Mel ends by repeating that the elderly husband’s “heart was breaking because he couldn’t turn his goddam head and see his goddam wife […] Do you see what I’m saying?” (137). Mel deteriorates into a foul-mouthed rant as his meaning gets lost, and he realizes that no one understands what he is trying to say, emphasizing the inadequacy of language.
With the last of the gin poured, Terri says that Mel is depressed; he’s taken all kinds of pills, but nothing works. Mel wishes he could call his children but doesn’t want to risk speaking to his ex-wife. She is financially ruining them, and he fantasies about unleashing a swarm of bees on her, as she is allergic to them. The authoritative and professional figure Mel presented at the beginning of the story has been stripped back to reveal a man who lacks compassion and is, in a way, every bit as sadistic and violent as Terri’s ex-partner. All the characters are now drunk. They all want to eat, apart from Nick, who remarks that he could do anything: “I could head right on out into the sunset” (138). Instead of getting up from the table, they remain unmoving. Nick can hear everyone’s heart beating as night falls, and the room goes dark. The fading sunlight parallels the characters’ increasing inability to understand one another. They quietly resign to the darkness, signaling that silent uncertainty has enveloped them. Traditionally, the heart is a symbol of emotional love. In this context, the sound of the characters’ beating hearts signifies that our innate humanity, not words, connects us. In this way, the characters find a common ground despite being unable to agree on what love is or is not.
By Raymond Carver