Within the Raymond Carver short story, I think there are multiple conflicts or tensions that can be discussed – all of which contribute to the creation of this larger picture or impression of the subject.
The first would be the tension that exists between the sublime and the banal. On a more mechanical level, this is present in the language employed by Carver – where, while we see high-level dialogue dealing with this abstract idea of love, it’s punctuated by the numerous “he said” or “she said “phrases, as well as the lack of more romantic, descriptive prose. When considering the actual content matter, there then exists this contrast between a highly idealized version of love that ‘Mel’ refers to (specifically to the old couple) and the practical examples of love that are referred to in the story. For instance, we see that Mel is often aggressive towards Terry – telling her to “Shut Up” for “once in her life” – demonstrating a tension that exists within the relationship. The same is true for the situation between Ed and Terry … the former physically abusing the latter.
What this points to is the idea that there are multiple forms of love, none of which quite conform to the ‘idealized’ version of the love that Mel believes in. However, Mel doesn’t allow himself to arrive at this conclusion (for instance vehemently stating that the relationship between Ed and Terri wasn’t really love … which is ironic given that there are similarities between Ed and Mel, in terms of their aggression towards Terri). The concept of true love is almost like an obsession for him (‘toasting towards it’ and, spending, from what we can infer, to be a considerable amount of time thinking about his experience with the old couple). But this obsession amounts to some degree of trouble for Mel … given that in many ways, his relationship doesn’t match to it (several micro-tensions between him and Terri, first failed marriage, the tension between him and Laura?). Causes him to have a much more cynical image of love in the modern world (if I can’t achieve it … why can you, hence his surprise at the old man’s statement [“can you imagine?”).
There are instances where you can see this cynicism manifest,
