Through his tone of writing, Carver seemingly presents the hopelessness that society faces in pinning love to specificity and an identity through a criticism of the vanity that we represent in our interpretations of one’s actions as ‘love’. His use of Nick as a passive muse through which to tell the story, in first person, positions ourselves in Nick’s perspective as a listener and observer of what Mel and Terri have to show us that we do not seem to see yet.

The contrast between Mel’s rationality in the opening and his emotional reactions when intoxicated towards the end contribute to the theme of complexity and the helplessness in maintaining a steadfast opinion on the definition of love. Mel talks of the idea as love being nothing less than spiritual; the people who we fall in love with are no more than muses, there is no sense of a ‘truth’ to love. The truth of love is what we make it out to be, and is not inextricably tied to a material being. However, for considering himself a “mechanic” who merely goes in and gets the job done, the truth of the reactions we see from the intoxicated Mel is a man who prides his cynicism on the terrible experiences that he has had with love, ranging from the trauma of Ed’s constant threats to the hatred that replaced the love he once had for his ex-wife.

Mel’s seemingly rational approach is consolidated by the critical tone in which he interprets Terri’s idea of love; Carver’s acknowledgment of the vanity that we feel in attributing obsessive ‘acts of love’ to our influence and deserved passion. Terri interprets Ed’s acts of violence and aggression as though she was so loveable that she was able to push him to this extreme, demonstrating her vanity in believing that it was her who inspired this irrational obsession. Perhaps it was just respect for Ed’s feelings from someone who believed that it was surprising for someone to be attracted to her. Carver seems to satire the archetypal tenet of chivalry in love, through Mel’s dream to be a knight in shining armour and Terri’s belief in Ed “willing to die for it,” again a criticism of the ways in which we aim to categorise love and attribute it to specific characteristics rather than recognise its ability to take different forms.

Perhaps Carver aims to present his opinion on the imperfect ways in which we categorise love into characteristics and actions through Nick and Laura. Nick recognises that “in addition to being in love,” him and Laura “like each other and enjoy one another’s company.” Is that not what love is to a majority of society, to what movies and romance novels alike want us to interpret love as? Carver suggests the idea that love is an umbrella term; while we try to understand its different forms, it has no specific role or characteristic that is common between us as a society. As Laura recognises that she and Nick know what love is for them, it shows the idea that love is tangible in a sense. It varies from person to person, and as Mel says, there is the capacity for one to love again after having lost before. It is up to the circumstances of one’s unique life, that determine who with and how they fall in love.