‘‘Aunty Misery’’ begins with these words: ‘‘This is a story.’’ This self-conscious opening seems redundant; readers are aware they are reading a story and hardly need to be reminded of that. However, the statement is effective in that it serves to elevate the fictional quality of the tale that ensues. No claim as to the…
Tag: Short Stories
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Essay – Explained
Carver had stopped drinking by the time Furious Seasons was published, but he had not yet returned to writing. When he did, his stories were markedly different from what they had been. The obsessions were the same, but the stories were much darker, reflecting the hell of marital discord and alcoholism that Carver himself had…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Analysis
Carver is best known for his minimalist writing style, as embodied in a sparse use of language and paired down prose. He is also known as a neorealist, capturing the working class milieu of blue-collar America with his mundane, naturalistic, everyday dialogue. Nevertheless, he does make use of figurative language throughout “What We Talk About…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Setting
John Gardner John Gardner (1933-1982), an American novelist and poet, was one of Carver’s first writing teachers. Gardner is perhaps best known for his novel Grendel (1971), which is a retelling of the traditional Beowulf story from the perspective of the monster. His novel October Light (1976) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gardner…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Literary Devices – Narrator
Narration The story is told from the first-person restricted point-of-view. The narrator, Nick, describes the interactions between the two couples only from his own perspective. Nick portrays his relationship with his wife, Linda, in glowing terms, full of warmth, affection, and mutual respect. Given the atmosphere of the story, and the tone of the conversation,…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Themes
Love The central theme of this story is love. The two couples spend the evening drinking gin and discussing the nature of “real love.” The narrator explains that ”we somehow got on the subject of love.” It is Mel who insists on returning to the topic of love. He believes that “love was nothing less…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Characters
Laura Laura is Nick’s wife. They have been together for a year and a half. She is thirty five years old and a legal secretary. The narrator describes her as “easy to be with.” Nick’s depiction of Laura is based on the continuing “honeymoon” tone of their relationship. Laura’s comments and her expressions of affection…
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Summary
The action of the story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” takes place over the course of an evening, in which two couples, Nick and Laura, and Mel and Terri McGinnis, sit around the kitchen table at the McGinnis’ apartment, drinking gin and talking, before they all go out to dinner together….
That Evening Sun – Analysis
William Faulkner’s fictional world of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, is one of the most familiar locales in all of world literature. The families who inhabit the county—the Sutpens, McCaslins, Snopeses, and Compsons, among others—have family lives more vivid and more well-documented than many real families. As in the South in which Faulkner himself grew up, in…
That Evening Sun – Setting
New Kinds of Narration “That Evening Sun” is an example of the different kinds of narration that writers such as Faulkner pioneered. Although very traditional in comparison with some of Faulkner’s other experiments—part of The Sound and the Fury, for example, is narrated by a mentally retarded boy who has no sense of the passage…