FREE ESSAY ON THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST BY ANNE TYLER

THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST BY ANNE TYLER

Life just is. You have to flow with it.
Give yourself to the moment. Let it happen.
-Jerry Brown
If an individual allows changes to occur in one's life, then love can be the wonderful
result of that acceptance. The theme of reasons why we love and how we love different
people is demonstrated throughout the book The Accidental Tourist, written by Anne Tyler.
There are two main characters that undergo and accept the changes in their lives, and one
character that stays static throughout the book, helping one of the characters to change.
Macon Leary is first grounded by loneliness and comfort, then slowly opens himself up to
what appears to be a whole new world for him. Then, there is Sarah Leary, who controls
some of the changes in her life, and tries to make the best of the rest of them. The
character that remains the same throughout the book is Muriel Pritchett-a dog-trainer who
takes an interest in Macon and helps him to accept the changes in his life. Above all,
the universal theme of this book is love-a surprising new journey for all the
characters.
In the beginning of the book, it is explained how Macon and Sarah Leary's son is murdered
and how their marriage suffers because of this. Sarah leaves Macon, which is the
beginning stage of Macon's renovated life, but one that does not start off happily: "He
didn't eat real meals anymore...His hair, which Sarah used to cut for him, jutted over
his forehead like a shelf. Ande something had caused his lower lids to droop. He used to
have narrow gray slits of eyes; now they were wide and startled..." (14). Macon is not at
all used to living alone. He wants to control everything and likes nothing to be left to
chance-Sarah's departure is not something he can control and he does not deal with it
well. Macon begins to think that he cannot live without his wife, but soon realizes a few
things that really make him think about the marriage:
His brain buzzed with little worries...The worries changed, grew deeper, he wondered what
had gone wrong with his marriage. Sarah had been his first and only girlfriend; now he
thought he should have practiced on someone else beforehand. During the twenty years of
their marriage there's been moments-there's been months-when he didn't feel they had
really formed a unit the way couples were supposed to. No, the stayed two distinct
people, and now always even friends. Sometimes they'd seemed more like rivals, elbowing
each other, competing over who was the better style of person... (15-16)
Macon realizes that he and Sarah never actually became one person; they had always stayed
as two separate people living in a stale, routine marriage. Finally, Macon comes to terms
with the fact that Sarah is not coming home to him: "Well, of course she wasn't there. He
knew it the instant he stepped inside that house, when he smelled that stale hot air and
heard the muffled denseness of a place with every window shut. Really he'd known it all
along. He'd been fooling himself. He'd been making up fairy tales" (41). Macon knew that
when he got home from his business trip that Sarah would not be there waiting for him
like she used to. Although he did not ask for this change in his life, and after living
alone for a while, moves back with his sister and brothers-a comfortable change for him.
This all begins to change when Macon meets an unusual woman working at the animal
hospital where he takes his dog and becomes acquaintances with her. Muriel allows Macon
to open up to her, and Macon shows his willingness to do so:
'I lost my son,' Macon said. 'He was just...he went to a hamburger joint and
then...someone came, a holdup man, and shot him. I can't go to dinner with people! I
can't talk to their little boys! You have to stop asking me. I don't mean to hurt your
feelings but I'm just not up to this, do you hear?' She took one of his wrists very
gently and she drew him into the house, still not fully opening the door, so that he had
a sense of slipping through something, of narrowly evading something. She closed the door
behind him. She put her arms around him and hugged him. (189-190)
At first, Macon does not give Muriel Pritchett a second thought, but before he knows it,
he is dating her and soon living with Muriel and her young son. This shows a tremendous
change for Macon, and a step forward in his life. Muriel helps Macon to see the world in
a different way. She is the character that seems to know exactly what she is after in
life, and therefore does not change during the course of this book. On the other hand,
all Macon does throughout the book is change his life in extreme ways. Macon learns how
to love and trust Muriel in a way that he never has with anyone.
In an addition to Macon's changing life, there is his wife, Sarah, who makes the decision
to leave Macon a year after the death of their son. Sarah feels that Macon does not
express his emotions as she would like him to, and that he does not provide her with the
comfort she needs and has needed in the past. This frustrates Sarah greatly and she does
not feel as if she can continue in the marriage:
I said to you the other day, I said, 'Macon, now that Ethan's dead I sometimes wonder if
there's any point to life.' Do you remember what you answered?... 'You said, 'Honey, to
tell the truth, it never seemed to me there was all that much point to begin with.' Those
were your exact words... 'You just go on your same old way like before. Your little
routines and rituals, depressing habits, day after day. No comfort at all.'... 'I just
can't live with you anymore,' Sarah said. (3-4)
Sarah is heart-broken with this decision, as is Macon, but she is just not happy with her
marriage. During Macon and Sarah's separation, Sarah starts to move on and begins dating
a man. Though she has an apartment of her own, which is what she wanted, Sarah realizes
how much she truly loves and misses Macon, and makes a slight and almost unnoticeable
attempt to get back together with him much later in the book during a conversation
between her and Macon:
'It [the rain] looks like strips that just fade away about halfway down from the sky.' 'I
wish I were there to watch it with you,' Sarah said... 'Macon? Do you...What's her name?
The person you live with?' 'Muriel,' he said. Which he knew before she asked, he
suspected. 'Do you plan on staying with Muriel forever?' 'I really couldn't say,' he
said. (289-290)
Sarah is now the one longing for Macon. Macon thinks that the only thing to do is go back
to Sarah, since, after all, he had been longing to get her back for some time. Macon
returns to his house with Sarah, leaving Muriel: "He rode on through the city, up Charles
Street, into his old neighborhood. He parked and cut the engine and sat looking at the
house. The downstairs windows were dark. The upstairs windows were softly glowing.
Evidently, he had come home" (291). Macon is reluctant about coming home to Sarah, but in
the back of his mind he still feels like he needs her because they shared so much of
their lives together. Soon after, while Macon is on another business trip to Paris, his
back goes out and Sarah flies in to take care of him. Things seem to be going well, but
then Sarah sees Macon packing his things a few days later, which provides yet another
change for Sarah, as well as Macon:
Sarah said, 'Macon?'... 'What are you doing?' 'I'm packing to leave.' 'But what about
your back?' she asked. 'And I've got all those appointments! And we were going to take a
second honeymoon!' 'Sweetheart,' he said. He lowered himself cautiously till he was
sitting on the bed. He picked up her hand. It stayed lifeless while she watched his face.
'You're going back to that woman,' she said. 'Yes, I am,' he said. 'Why, Macon?' 'I just
decided, Sarah. I thought about it most of last night. It wasn't easy. It's not the easy
way out, believe me.'... he saw now how such couples evolved. They were not, as he'd
always supposed, the result of some ludicrous lack of perception, but had come together
for reasons that the rest of the world would never guess. (339-340)
Macon realizes that he is happier with Muriel, and although he does not want to cause
Sarah pain, this time, it is Macon that is making a change that Sarah cannot help-instead
of the other way around. Therefore, Sarah must accept these changes in her life, along
with all the ups and downs.
Finally, Muriel Pritchett is shown to be the one character that does not go through
changes in the duration of the book, already having experienced major alterations in her
earlier life. Muriel assures Macon of himself and makes Macon feel needed for the first
time in a long time: "Macon presented himself in front of her, holding out the pizza.
'Ta-da!' he whispered. She looked up at him and gave that perky smile of hers-an ornate,
Victorian V. 'Ma,' she said, 'I'm going now! Macon's here!' It had been a long time since
anyone made such an event of his arrival" (196). Macon shows that he is beginning to
allow himself to care for Muriel, and to be happy with her and this change in his
life-being needed. Later on, when Macon is at his sister's house, he begins to actually
miss Muriel:
Macon laid the photos aside without looking at the rest of them. He knelt to pat
Edward...Macon suddenly wished he were at Muriel's. He wrapped his arms around Edward and
imagined he smelled her sharp perfume deep in Edward's fur... above all else he was an
orderly man... There was no room in his life for anyone as unpredictable as Muriel. Or as
extreme. Or as...well, unlikable, sometimes... Then he knew what mattered was the pattern
of her life; that although he did not love her he loved the surprise of her, and also the
surprise of himself when he was with her. (201)
As much as Macon never thought he could care for Muriel, he finds himself almost loving
her, and loving himself more whenever he is with her. He begins to enjoy his time with
Muriel, and now moves with the flow of life, instead of life passing him by while he is
still standing still. After Macon leaves Muriel to get back with Sarah, he finds that
Muriel will not give up on him. She follows him to his business trip to Paris: "'...why
Muriel? Why are you doing this?' 'Because I felt like it,' she said. 'You felt like
spending five days alone in a Paris hotel? That's what is will be, Muriel.' 'You need to
have me around,' she said. 'Need you!' 'You were falling to pieces before you had me"
(318). Muriel is very persistent-just like when she had been pursuing Macon; she refuses
to give him up. In the end, Macon cannot refuse Muriel, and leaves Paris without Sarah.
This shows Muriel to be a stagnant character in this book-with her unwillingness to give
up and her belief in the goodness of people.
In conclusion, Macon and Sarah prove to be the characters that undergo the most rapid
changes, and Muriel remains static. Above all, Macon's desire to control his own life in
such a regimented way as packing for trips with a great notion of order is probably due
to the fact that he does not trust other people. He feels that he cannot rely on others
and instead can only trust himself. However, this all changes with the help of Muriel,
who proves to be one of the most beneficial people to come into Macon's life. Sarah
learns the hard way that you cannot always go back to people and places in your life and
try and fix things that are not worth fixing, or not capable of being salvaged. In this
case, it was she and Macon's marriage. Sometimes it is better to let go of the past and
move on to the future. The main theme of this book is love, and it is substantiated by
Macon's capability to lose sight of his fear and love someone completely different from
himself and all that he has known. All of this happened because of one individual's
acceptance of change and the flow of life.