Well, I don't think you're being honest when you say you see a function like a subset of the cartesian product. Because the example you gave is not a subset of any cartesian product. What I think is that you have a homework problem to give a set-theoretic representation of the sum of two functions.
First, it's important to understand what it means to represent a function as a subject of the cartesian product of domain and target. If $f\colon X \to Y$ is a function, we can create the set
$$
R = \left\{(x,y) \mid f(x) = y \right\}
$$
Since $R\subset X\times Y$, this is a relation. If $X$ and $Y$ are subsets of $\mathbb{R}$ and you plot $f$ in the plane, you see that $R$ is just the graph of $f$.
The defining property of a function is that its graph passes the “vertical line test”—that is, any vertical line intersects the graph in at most one point. Let's translate that to a set-theoretic condition. If the vertical line $x=x_0$ intersected the graph of $f$ in two points, then there would be two distinct points $(x_0,y_1)$ and $(x_0,y_2)$ on the graph of $f$. That is, the points $(x_0,y_1)$ and $(x_0,y_2)$ would both be in $R$. So $R\subset X\times Y$ is a function if there is no points $x_0$ and $y_1 \neq y_2$ with $(x_0,y_1)$ and $(x_0,y_2)$ in $R$. Contrapositively, $R$ is a function if, for any points $x_0$, $y_1$, and $y_2$ with $(x_0,y_1)$ and $(x_0,y_2)$ in $R$, then $y_1 = y_2$.
Now to your problem. You have $X$ and $Y$ vector spaces and two linear maps $f_1$ and $f_2$ from $X$ to $Y$. Take a pair $(x_0,y_0)$ in $X\times Y$. Under what conditions is $y_0=(f_1+f_2)(x_0)$? It would have to be true that $y_0 = y_1 + y_2$ where $y_1 = f_1(x_0)$ and $y_2 = f_2(x_0)$. In other words, $y_0 = y_1 + y_2$, where $(x_0,y_1)$ is in $R_{f_1}$, and $(x_0,y_2)$ is in $R_{f_2}$.