Tag Archives: Analysis

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

In this short story, Carver offers several perspectives of love and therefore enables his readers to form interpretations based upon the discussion between the four characters presented in the story. Carver chooses to set the scene of the story with simplicity, which is used in order to allow readers to focus on what is being said and not use the setting and the character’s descriptions to form their interpretations. Instead, the author utilises these characters as a pathway to introduce several points of view, that both interlink as well contradict each other and offer challenging questions.

Carver’s tone in this story varies between characters. As Mel holds most of the dialogue, Carver is able to present Mel with the most distinct voice and the one that dominates the scene.  Thus enabling the readers to  easily note Mel’s actions and words, and thus perhaps finding themselves agreeing with this character’s rather contradictory perspective on love.

Mel is presented as a character who both appears disorderly and pessimistic, as shown by his relationship with Terri, but also perceives Mel to be a character with admiration and optimism, through his attitude towards the elderly couple who appeared to have a fairytale-like relationship. Perhaps this is why Mel progressively becomes more aggressive during this scene, as he realises that his relationship with Terri, which appears to be realistic, is not what he desires and therefore he challenges Terri and offers controversial ideas to the group. Carver indicates that Mel is possibly ashamed of his love with Terri and hence makes conscious decisions to ruin it and create tension, in which no other character responds significantly to. It is this silence, that Carver creates, which produces this idea that love is a mystery, and leaves the question of what is love and what it might look like unanswered.

Carver uses this piece as a form of providing perspectives rather than showing his own through each of the characters. Its this choice that makes the story more complex and allows questions and challenges to arise.

Human Sciences – Claim & Analysis

Knowledge claim: Human behaviour can be influenced by an observer.

Real-life example: Hawthorne Studies – Hawthorne was considered a progressive place to work due to benefits workers received such as paid pension plans and sickness disability pay. An experiment was conducted there on the effects of illumination on worker efficiency. Output increased in general but was not affected by light as both workers working in light and in dim light had an increase in output. The study was ceased due to lack of results. However a similar idea was experimented on women making relays. These women were given rest breaks and different hours were tried. As a result, output increased by 30%. The observers studied workers producing more in less time.

TOK analysis: We must acknowledge that output increased wherever these tests were tried, and thus wherever workers were observed and studied. There is a knowledge issue presented here as the observers did not notice this with the Hawthorne studies. There was a connection found that simply did not exist. The conclusion that was ignored was that human behaviour (in this context, the output produced) changed drastically when these workers were observed. The observers influenced the workers behaviour and resulted in an increase in output. They were now in a more pressured environment where they could not slack in their work and thus were in general more efficient. To avoid this issue, we must consider the effects of the experimental process itself on the results and not just the factor(s) (independent variable) that is tested/changed in the experiment.

Paper 1 Feedback

  • What we choose to write about should act as a magnifying glass in order to show missed details about the poem.

  • They should also be used to make details from the poem more clear, especially when metaphors or figurative language is used.

  • We should not be simply paraphrasing lines from the poem.

NOT TO DO:

  • Don’t just list techniques, explain how they are used effectively to support the deeper meaning.
  • Don’t use two synonyms next to each other as it just adds words but doesn’t actually describe anything.

NOT TO DO:

  • After embedding quotations write the line number next to it.

  • Comment on the title – but not just the literal subject matter.

  • Don’t rely on “connotation” or “imagery” to explain a poem.
    • Unpack the image – how does it reveal a pattern of language? or reveal what is implicit?

  • Mention voice.
  • Recognise the tensions in the poem and the effects on its voice.