What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

A recurring motif is light and dark. The story starts during daylight, when “the afternoon sun was like a presence in this room, the spacious light of ease and generosity” (131). There is a feeling of hope and optimism as the four friends struggle with The Inability to Define Love and bring up different examples to explain their definitions.

The light subtly changes as the subject matter gets deeper and tensions start to grow between the characters. Laura finds it difficult to light her cigarette as her matches keep going out. At the same time, Nick notices a change in the natural environment: “The sunshine inside the room was different now, changing, getting thinner. But the leaves outside the window were still shimmering, and I stared at the pattern they made on the panes and on the Formica counter. They weren’t the same patterns, of course” (136). Nick describes this moment as transforming the place into something “enchanted” with them as “children who had agreed on something forbidden” (131). Yet this epiphany never reaches its full potential. The characters are not just struggling with defining the concept of love.