The story “What we Talk about when we talk about Love” by Raymond Carver introduces four grown up characters who have experiences in their marriage life. The story tackles the elusive nature of love. This is evident when the characters vehemently try to describe it. Mel, the talkative surgeon, tries to give his thoughts on love but does not manage to convince the others. The other couple in the room believes they know the real meaning of love but find it difficult to define it. However, in the end of the day, they seem to come to togetherness and are intertwined by the essence of love. The story “Yellow Woman” by Leslie Marmon Silko, tells the story of a young woman who encounters a romantic escapade with a stranger. It involves a girl who runs away with a stranger whom she meets at the river. The stranger tries to convince her that she is the Yellow Woman from an old tale, and he is the Ka’tsina spirit. Silva tries to convince her that they were meant to be together. Although she does not believe him, she continues along with him as he provides her with an escape from reality. In both stories, we can see that love is a stronger emotion than hate, and it wins the day.
In the story by Silko, a young woman is walking by the river when she meets a handsome stranger named Silva. Silva is a cattle rustler living in the mountains and does not belong to any tribe. Although the young woman has a husband and baby, she runs away with the stranger. Although it may seem that Silva is abducting her, she twice returns to him even when she has a chance to run away. As she points out, “And I told myself, because I believe it, he will come back sometime and be waiting again by the river” (1210). When a white rancher confronts Silva and the yellow...
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...his heart and the others hearts beating. This shows that the conversation they had together had brought them closer to one another. This togetherness shows that love is a strong emotions and that it takes the day.
In conclusion, we get to see that the four characters in Carver’s story agree that one can know about love by seeing or feeling it; it may be difficult to define or understand love. On the story of the yellow woman, we get to see a woman who seeks an escape from reality with a stranger she barely knows. Although she barely knows the man, the yellow woman escapes with him leaving her family behind. In both stories, we get to see that love is a very strong emotion.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. What we Talk about when we talk about Love. New York: Random House, 2009
Silko, Leslie M. Yellow Woman and the Free Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
In a world where the vast majority of cultures are patriarchal, in response to traditional structures, women often find themselves at war in their minds, hearts and in their own actions. 'Yellow woman' and 'The story of an hour' are examples of how women struggle in a male domintaed society. In these two stories, the women fnd themselves wrestling with thoughts and emotions that our society consider unacceptable. The following statements ,ay be asked and considered of these women:
...imately failing to do so. Maybe there is a gem that you hold up as a standard for what you are looking for. Carver never describes self love, maybe it is left out because that is the elusive love the Mel McGinnis is struggling to find and in this story at least fails to find. Finding only self hate instead. The last two sentences suggest this story could be about anyone including yourself. “I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone’s heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.” “What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.: (ShopTalk)
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a beautiful African-American woman who wants to explore and find love with a real man. She goes through a few men trying to do this, but at the same time she is unwillingly forced with these men who don’t affiliate with the love she desires. However, when Tea Cake marries Janie she gains self-determination when he expresses his love and affection to her that is qualifying factors of her love expectations. Therefore, Janie learns the value of true love and proves herself as a brave woman.
“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.” The main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford, possesses a seemingly unquenchable thirst for affection, and does not rest until she finds the man who is able to offer her the love she desires and believes to deserve. Janie defines love as a fluid force that is different with every man, and transforms with changing circumstances. Janie does not care to be wealthy, or to have high social standing; she wishes to be submerged in a sea of tenderness and to swim through waters of passion, and to be caressed by captivating waves of lust. Her idealistic conception of love and the corresponding desire for it developed from her sixteen-year-old obsession with a bee pollinating a pear blossom in the back yard of her grandmother’s house.
The Poet by Paul Laurence Dunbar Before we pass on from this world, it would be nice if we had left our mark, given our contribution, made our claim in the history of human civilization. Wouldn't it be wonderful to achieve such a goal? Wouldn't it be horrible to have attained that level of recognition and yet be recognized for things you deemed inferior? In the poem "The Poet", Paul Laurence Dunbar expresses his remorse at having written superior Standard English literature and yet only be known and praised for his Dialect works. The first way Dunbar achieves this meaning is through his use of language.
The Lais of Marie de France is a compilation of short stories that delineate situations where love is just. Love is presented as a complex emotion and is portrayed as positive, while at other times, it is portrayed as negative. The author varies on whether or not love is favorable as is expressed by the outcomes of the characters in the story, such as lovers dying or being banished from the city. To demonstrate, the author weaves stories that exhibit binaries of love. Two distinct types of love are described: selfish and selfless. Love is selfish when a person leaves their current partner for another due to covetous reasons. Contrarily, selfless love occurs when a lover leaves to be in a superior relationship. The stark contrast between the types of love can be analyzed to derive a universal truth about love.
The poem “The Old Maid”, by Sara Teasdale, takes place on a sidewalk on Broadway. The speaker in the poem is a woman walking with who you can infer to be her fiancée and she is describing a brief encounter she had with another woman in the car driving by her. The speaker describes the woman as “The woman I might grow to be,” She then notices how her hair color “…was as mine” and how “Her eyes were strangely like my eyes”. However, despite all these similarities the woman’s hair compared to the speaker’s was “…dull and drew no light”. Her eyes also did not shine like the speaker’s. The speaker assumed that the reason for the woman’s frail appearance was because she had never had the opportunity to know what it was like to be in love. In the last stanza, the speaker no longer looks upon the old maid but to her lover and knows that even though they may look similar she will never be like her.
Fairytales and modern day movies project a stereotypical portrayal of love, idealizing it and ignoring the not so happy ever after when the prince and princess go back to their castle. Walker and Salinger in their respective novels present the idea of love with much more verisimilitude without the traditional symbols of castles and titles. Instead, opting for a warts and all exploration of love, focusing on its utopian and dystopian elements. Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’ is a tale of a black woman who is driven to lesbian love due to the abuse undertaken by men. J. D. Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, similarly speaks of a sexually frustrated young man not able to fulfill his desires due to societal constraints. Both the novels encapsulate realistic elements of love like the healing and harmful effects it can have on humans; we see all the pure forms of love as juxtaposed through the plot line with the absence of parental love, love between siblings and homosexual love. But, through all of the toils begotten by both Celie and Holden, love is a constant. ‘’Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’’.
Love, an emotion everyone can relate to. This theme draws in many readers as it is a very passionate topic. In Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya, she attempts to use love as a major theme throughout the story to keep the audience engaged. However, this method doesn't work in this case because it is not true love, but rather an undermining theme guised by this “fake love.” The true theme, instead of love, is portrayed as anti-feminism and a degradation in power of women. Therefore, love is not an overlying theme in Nectar in a Sieve, but rather women’s dependence on men, which counters feminism beliefs and gives less power to women.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It is a story that explores all
Love cannot be defined in one sentence or even a paragraph. Every human has his or her own definition of love because people usually define love based on their cultures, backgrounds, social classes, educations, and their societies. In this essay, the main point will be the different kinds of love that Carver illustrates in his story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” In Carver’s story, there are some points that I can relate to my personal experience. There are a few characteristics and symbols in the story that are really important to understand in order to define what a real love is and find the intention thrown out the story. These characteristics includes, Mel, Terri and Ed and Terri’s relationship. Furthermore, symbols such as ”sunlight” and “dark room”,” cardiologist” and “silence” at the end of the story can have a specific intention thrown out of the story.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
Ford, Karen. “The Yellow Wallpaper and Women’s Discourse.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 4.2 (1985): 309-14. JSTOR. Web. 6 April 2011.
Three different Western marriage customs have influenced the characters in the story "Marriage is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe. It is about a Nnaemeke and Nene. Nnaemeke was an Igbo but Nene was from a different part of the country. They fell in love and Nnameke proposed. Then Nnaemeke got a letter from his father telling him about an arranged marriage that is being planned. Very disappointed, Nnaemeke comes home and tells his father that he will not get married to anybody, except Nene. Nnaemeke was kicked out from his father's house and wasn’t wanted there anymore. Happily married, Nnaemeke and Nene, had two sons. They wanted to see their grandpa and wouldn’t stop asking to visit him. When Nnaemeke's father read the letter about his grandsons he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about them. At last he was beginning to open his heart for his son, daughter-in-law, and his grandsons. The first custom was that the parents arranged marriages for their children. Nnaemeka's father had arranged a wedding for him with a girl from his culture. The second custom was that love was not part of the marriages. All that mattered was that she had to be a good Christian and had the potential to become a good wife. The third custom is that the woman had to be raised from the same culture. Women from other cultures were not welcomed in Igbo culture and families. These three customs had a huge affect on Nene's and Nnaemeka's lives.
Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper." New York: Feminist Press, 1992.