Verified Document

Ray Carver Essay

¶ … Raymond Carver's "Gazebo" to "what we talk about when we talk about love" The entire theme is very much an existentialist one with both stories alluding to the meaninglessness of love, lust, alcoholism, boredom, and, running through it all, the futility of everything. Life equals death -- is perhaps even more than death, for whilst death denotes passivity and absence of negativity, life is full of these destructive elements of infidelity, despair, meaninglessness, and torpor.

In Raymond Carver's "Gazebo," Duane and Holly, managers of a motel, are two aimless characters that, at one time, had higher dreams for their life. Duane, at least, is a college graduate, and from both Duane and Holly's action and speech, we get a clear impression that both feel cheated by their existence. They don't seem to do much. They receive free lodging and utilities and a small stipend. And both are hankering for more.

Duane cannot forget his previous affair with a Hispanic maid...

In an attempt to reignite his passion, she goes so far as to pour whisky on his stomach and lick it off. She fails to stimulate his passion and accuses him of killing her. Here, as so often in the story, whiskey, infidelity, and death are integrated.
Whiskey is a prominent piece in the story. When the pair want to settle things, they do it by holing themselves up in a room with a bottle of whisky. Whiskey, in fact, is prominent in "What we talk about when we talk about love" too.

There, the characters, bored and drift less, soak themselves in the liquid. "What we talk about when we talk about love" -- taking those words literally and extracting them form the title - seem, in Carver's world, to indicate whiskey and emptiness. Love, he seems to infer, is transient, and, just like life itself, contrary to how romantics paint it. Both 'life' and 'love' --…

Sources used in this document:
Reference

Carver, R. What we talk about when we talk about love: stories. New York: Knopf, 1981.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Carver Given Poet and Author
Words: 2663 Length: 8 Document Type: Term Paper

The story "The Bridle," for instance, tells about what could have turned out to be a family tragedy. However, written by Carver it becomes much stronger and more positive. After going bankrupt in agriculture, a family moves with its few belongings packed into a station wagon to a cheap apartment in a hotel somewhere in the Midwest. The narrator, who is the unfriendly and uncaring woman who runs the hotel,

Raymond Carver When One Is Seeking a
Words: 7255 Length: 26 Document Type: Term Paper

Raymond Carver When one is seeking a bright, cheerily optimistic view of the world one does not automatically turn to the works of Raymond Carver. The short story writer - whom many critics cite as being the greatest master of that form since Ernest Hemingway - filled his pages with anger and discontent, despair and loss, desperation and the demons of addiction. The overall tone of his work is certainly dark.

Cathedral - Raymond Carver About the Author
Words: 3090 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Cathedral - Raymond Carver About the author An American writer Raymond Carver has been writing stories on a smaller emotional scale for few years that creates same effects. Mostly his story settings contain American towns, semi-industrial, which are mostly depressed. However, his characters, working-class loners fighting for speech, from time to time find work as factory hands and waitresses, while his actions in the stories slip across the troubles of every day

School Uniforms
Words: 4090 Length: 15 Document Type: Term Paper

School uniforms for students are becoming more and more popular across the country. Research suggest that schools with a mandatory school-wide uniform policy have better attendance, better behavior, fewer discipline referrals, and more school spirit. Children seem to become more focused on academics. They are also easily identified on campus, in the community, and on field trips, making general safety another benefit of wearing uniforms. It is hypothesized that behavior in

Understanding of Death Dying and Grieving
Words: 2327 Length: 7 Document Type: Term Paper

Death and Dying Heard the Owl Call My Name The first dilemma in Margaret Craven's I heard the owl call my name arises within the clergy community, as a Bishop debates whether or not to tell his young Anglican missionary that the missionary only has "a little less than two years if he's lucky" (11). For some people, living out the last two years of a life in remote Indian villages

Milk by Products and There Effects on Growth in Poultry
Words: 3810 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

Poultry Milk from the cow is one of the most versatile and important substances in the human diet as well as in the diets of many animals and in particular in the diet of poultry that are being raised as layers, broilers or for other purposes. The fact that this milk can be processed into many different forms adds to its versatility and provides a wide array of by-products from which

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now