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Similes
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Mel’s Aggression:
In an example of situational irony, Mel clearly expresses at the start of the story his belief that love and violence cannot coexist (telling his wife Terri that what she had with her abusive ex-boyfriend Ed “was not love”) before later behaving in violent ways toward Terri while telling her that he loves her. The irony of Mel’s actions comes across in the following passage, which follows Mel's story about an elderly couple who survive a car accident because of their love for each other:
Mel said, "I was going to tell you about something. I mean, I was going to prove a point. You see, this happened a few months ago, but it's still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk above love."
"Come on now," Terri said. "Don't talk like you're drunk if you're not drunk.”
"Just shut up for once in your life," Mel said very quietly. "Will you do me a favor and do that for a minute?”
Mel gets heated because he doesn’t feel he was able to communicate what he wanted to about the elderly couple and, when Terri cajoles him for “talk[ing] like [he’s] drunk,” he snaps at her, telling her, “Just shut up for once in your life.” Though he says this quietly, the effect is still chilling. Until this point in the story, Mel has been slightly passive aggressive toward his wife, but never overtly aggressive. At this point, readers can pick up on the fact that Mel is hypocritical when it comes to his views on love—he waxes poetic about the purity of love but, in reality, aggression (verbal violence) and love are intertwined for him, the same way that they are for Terri.
The story also employs a broader form of situational irony. Although it is titled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," and although the characters spend the entire story trying to capture the true nature of love, an actual understanding of love seems to elude them by the end of the narrative.
Related Themes:
