FREE ESSAY ON A CLOSED FAMILY IN ANNE TYLER'S DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTARAUNT

A CLOSED FAMILY IN ANNE TYLER'S DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTARAUNT

A Closed Family:
Growth Through Suffering
The novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of Tyler's more complex because it
involves not only the growth of the mother, Pearl Tull, but each of her children as well.
Pearl must except her faults in raising her children, and her children must all face
their own loneliness, jealousy, or imperfection. It is in doing this that they find
connections to their family. They find growth through suffering.
"Cody Tull, the oldest child and the one most damaged by the failure of his parents'
marriage he becomes an aggressive, quarrelsome efficiency expert."(Voelker 126) He feels
that it his fault that Beck, the father, left. Especially when they bring up the arrow
incident. Cody never really feels like a family as he expresses: "You think were a
family…when in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place?"(Tyler 294). He
never recovers from his father leaving.
The optimism of Ezra is never noticed by the family. He never let his past affect his
life and very little bothered him. The family does not notice his optimism because Cody
resented it, Jenny ignored it and Pearl misunderstood it. His optimism is shown when Cody
is reflecting on their childhood, about how bad it was and how their mother was a
"shrieking witch". Ezra responds, "She wasn't always angry. Really she was angry very
seldom, only a few times widely spaced, that happened to stick in your mind"(Tyler 295).
Even though Ezra felt his childhood was not that unhappy, he never feel his family is a
whole because of Cody's jealousy, Jenny's isolation and Pearl's confusion. "Ezra creates
and manages a restaurant that corrects the excessive closeness of his family with an
atmosphere that consoles the customer while making no demands."(Volker 126) This was his
idealistic home.
"Jenny, the youngest, becomes a pediatrician, a professional mother, who can avoid
stifling emotional obligations."(Volker 126) She, as a child, ignores most of what's
going on so that no emotional harm is done to her. Jenny exclaimed: "We made it didn't
we? We did grow up. Why, the three of us turned out fine.", as if she has no regrets nor
has made no mistakes. This shows how she ignores and avoided emotional conflict
throughout her life.
Pearl often wondered how other families worked and why hers didn't. "At one point late in
life she indulges in the signal act of idealization imagining the lives of other, 'happy'
families"(Voelker 128). She always kept outsiders out of the lives of the Tulls. She did
this for two reasons. The first was so no one could see their problems and the second was
so her children couldn't see what they were missing.
Closed families produce people less socially and personally satisfied. For instance, the
son or daughter in a family business may tell the parent what to do with the business,
but their relationship problem is never really resolved. It is just deferred until the
next argument. This is an immature way of dealing with a situation one cannot cope with.
When family becomes locked into a particular pattern of inter-family strife and too many
unspoken areas of responsibility and commitment occur the family will crumble. In another
of Tyler's novels, The Accidental Tourist, this is the problem with Macon's family. It
leads to problems with his wife. After his son dies his feelings are numb. He never opens
up until an outsider, Muriel puts him in touch with the world again and real life. This
is also the problem with the Tulls. When Ezra wants to become a partner with Ms.
Scarlatti his mother tries to persuade him not to, even though it would benefit him
greatly. Unfortunately, Pearl sees the world outside her family as alien. Even Ms.
Scarlatti's generous offer was a threat to the family. Because of this no guest ever came
to the Tull house and when Pearl saw Josiah Payson at the house with Jenny she rudely
insulted him so he would leave. "She employs her practical skills to make the home
airtight and efficient, her manipulative skills to bind her children to her"(Volker 128).
This is how Pearl kept her family closed.
This double standard Pearl set explains why Cody, Ezra, and Jenny were successful in
their careers even though they failed in their relationships with each other as a family.
There upbringing in a closed family was destructive and like Macon, from The Accidental
Tourist, they did not open up and flourish until they were exposed to the outside world.
Whether short or drawn out all growing is painful. It tests a family for "what it's
worth". Growth shapes a family's relationships, identities, and values. However families
can not grow without suffering. That suffering is part of the growing process, which
includes giving up personal choices, jealousies and animosities. So it is true to say
that family life involves some suffering for the individuals and the group but hopefully
it is for the better for more acceptance and love of one another. 
Bibliography
Voelker, Joeseph C. Art and the Accidental in Anne Tyler. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1989, 125-146.
Tyler, Anne. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1982.