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Introduction
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler, follows the lives of three siblings in Baltimore, Maryland. A major theme expressed in this work is in isolation, while another is the influence of family that a person cannot escape. Isolation, which is (debatably) a stronger theme in this book, is also a theme in Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into the Good Night and Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.
Plot Summary
The characters Cody, Ezra, and Jenny share memories and life experiences being raised by their mother following their father leaving the family. Throughout the story, the reader can see how the different siblings experience the same things in their way. The father, Beck, was a salesman often away for business while the three children were raised by the mother, Pearl. The character Pearl is considered a perfectionist, and when the father deserts the family, she is challenged in her attempt to hold the family together as strongly as it used to be. The children usually do not act with good behavior.
Cody is the oldest sibling and is also considered to be the wildest. Cody is jealous of the supposed favorite sibling in the eyes of their mother, Ezra. Ezra is known as the mild-mannered and passive brother, who never seeks revenge for the actions against him. Ezra is employed at a restaurant and later is promoted to manager. Later still, Ezra inherits the restaurant. The main cook of the restaurant becomes engaged and later marries Ezra. Cody later becomes a wealthy businessman. Jenny’s life is somewhat difficult because she cannot find happiness with love, and finally, she gains stability with her third husband. The recurring scene in this story is Ezra trying to unite the members of his family at a restaurant. Pearl dies near the end of the story, and in the following dinners, there are conflicts. The family is never able to have a peaceful, happy meal at the “homesick restaurant.”
Library research
Summary
The first article used is about the author, and is a summary of her life and her dedication to writing. Understanding this helps in the understanding of the story, while similar underlying themes are evident in other works by Tyler. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was arguably Tyler’s best book at the time it was published, and remains one of her best books today. Tyler was born in 1941 and is generally thought to be one of America’s most important writers that is still alive. Tyler’s writing was influenced by writers like Emerson, Welty, Faulkner, and Thoreau. Her writing is thought to carry some of these common well-known traditions (Encylopedia on World Biography 2009).
Beginning in Minnesota, Tyler’s family would move often to a variety of Quaker communities in the South and Midwest. Finally they would settle in North Carolina. Tyler went on to college at Duke University, majoring in Russian language. Future novelist Reynolds Price taught (in the way of a mentor) and befriended Tyler during these college years. Price would encourage Tyler to pursue writing with more passion, but Tyler’s passion would not change as she continued to study Russian. Tyler married an Iranian psychologist, Taghi Modarressi, in 1962. In 1964 they moved to Montreal. Here Tyler became an assistant librarian at a local law school and would soon write her first two novels. The novels, If Morning Ever Comes and The Tin Can Tree were published in 1964 and 1967, respectively.
The couple moved to Baltimore in 1967. Here, Tyler would soon write two more novels, A Slipping-Down Life and The Clock Winder. Around this time Tyler was earning respect and praise from literary critics. In the early 1980s, when Tyler’s Morgan’s Passing was published, she would be known as a famous literary artist and important literary figure; the novel would get nominated for the National Books Critics Circle award and would win the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. In 1982, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant won the Faulkner Award for fiction as was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and Book Critics Circle award. Later in the 1980s, The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons would win Tyler a National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize. Following her pinnacle writing award-winning novels, Tyler has written six additional novels to date with one more to be released this year in September (Encylopedia on World Biography 2009).
Characters are challenged to find some balance between family and self-identity in most of Tyler’s books. In Tyler’s first book, If Morning Ever Comes, the character of Ben Joe Hawkes comes home after quitting law school since he could not pay close enough attention nor focus on his studies well enough to continue. Ben was worried about his family and decided to take on the role of a ‘substitute father.’ After being back for a day Ben soon has more responsibilities than he can handle. In the novel The Clock Winder, the character Elizabeth Abbot leaves her role as a family handyman and gardener but soon finds new similar roles in another family. When she attempts to flee these roles she finds more as a mother, wife, are caretaker.
In A Slipping-Down Life, Evie Decker is unhappy with herself as an overweight and unattractive woman and decides to carve a rock star’s name in her forehead. This earns her some popular attention, and she helps the career of the star she ends up marrying (while getting more positive publicity.) The psychological problems of characters are noticeable in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (as is further discussed in the rest of this paper.) While the characters try to live normal family lives, they simply cannot escape confrontation and family arguments while trying to bond at restaurant. Here readers see how the influence of family cannot be avoided, among other themes (Encylopedia on World Biography 2009).
Tyler’s more recent stories are not as negative as the earlier ones, though they are still negative in many regards. The Accidental Tourist, while gaining Tyler additional fame after going to video, tells the story of Macon Leary. Leary’s marriage crumbles following the murder of her son. Leary must soon choose between the solace she finds in isolation and the discomfort in embracing the rest of her family, and this is the theme of the story. Many critics choose Tyler’s Breathing Lessons as her best work overall, as it arguably best defines personality with regards to relationships. In this book, Tyler focuses on finer details and gestures as far as the marriage of Ira and Maggie Moran. Ira is the owner of a photo framing store, who has a silent personality. Maggie, Ira’s wife of over thirty years, is a very talkative and warm person. Most of the couple’s time is spent traveling to various people that Maggie involves herself with, to the point of social excess, gossip, and meddling. Some regard these circumstances as comedic, and it is agreed that this novel is Tyler’s most light-hearted (Encylopedia on World Biography 2009).
Although an award-winning author, Tyler is a private individual who gives priority to her family while often ignoring public requests. Tyler declines interviews, talk shows, and other related invitations on nearly all occasions. She currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland (Encylopedia on World Biography 2009).
Evaluation
This article provides a great deal of insight into the narration of the book analyzed in this paper. We can see the life, personality, and main underlying themes of all of Tyler’s work and gain a better understanding of the messages in the Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. The story is in fact highly negative and pessimistic overall, and we can see though Tyler’s other work that this is quite common. Family themes are also a favorite. Also, as will be discussed, the theme of isolation which is so strong in this story is also apparently noticeable with Tyler’s personal life, at least in her wanting to remain isolated from the public eye. This article seems correct and agreeable in both credibility of fact and opinion, the notion that the author is typically a pessimist or generally negative is also quite agreeable.
Summary
The second article relates to a secondary theme to the book, the theme of a suffocating home repressing one’s personal growth. An overbearing family is a major theme in the novel. Cody has a particularly strong desire to leave home and become more involved with the world. He, however, is forbidden to do so by his family. He eventually leaves the entire town only to occasionally return when invited by Ezra for the (attempted) uniting dinners. When Cody later is reunited with his father his views change somewhat, while he then craves praise for his achievements. Cody was arguably the most affected by his father’s absence, and also had the strongest views about nearly everything (Ruppart 2008).
Isolation and poor social lines within the family are also evident with Jenny’s problem marriages. Jenny shows a level of confusion with regards to the true potential for bonding. Jenny keeps distance even from people supposed to be very close to her, while viewing self-revelation as not being natural and being chaotic. Regarding her marriage she says “Wasn’t that what a marriage ought to be? Like one of those movie-style disasters – shipwrecks or earthquakes or enemy prisons – where strangers, trapped in close quarters by circumstance, show their real strengths and weaknesses.” (Tyler, 89) Jenny is constantly trying to flee her home, like her brother Cody. Jenny is not like Cody in the way she makes amends with her previous life events and emotions. It is of important note that when Jenny visits Josiah’s home, which is built similar to her home that she considers negative, she describes Josiah’s home as dreamy and comparable to a fairy tale. This strongly implies that Jenny’s emotional instincts from her past are creating positive senses like nostalgia even though negative life events have warped her perspective (Ruppart 2008).
The novel also touches on the role of women during the 1960s in the United States. Pearl is dependent upon and thus expects funds from her husband, Beth, in additional to funds from her sons. Pearl rejects the idea of becoming educated further shows her dependence on others for financial stability, while this also causes her to be without a formal education and subject to low-paying employment after her husband leaves the family. It can be thus states that the expectations of the culture in the United States with regards to gender played a part in the lowered financial statues and potential of the family. It may have been this very realization that led Jenny to be scared of being in a similar situation and thus adamantly pursue a career in the medical field.
At the same time it was Pearl’s lack of ability to speak properly and express her feelings that influences Jenny as well, and this may have played a role in her first husband leaving her and the lack of success in future relationships as well. Pearl, as a mother, clearly prides herself in her ability to raise her children by herself. Her determination to do this without ever saying (or admitting perhaps) that she needs the children’s father or any father at all can be viewed as a type of rebellion and rejection for the stigmas of society during that time period. Meanwhile her unsuccessful relationship with Beck reduces her to a state lacking emotion, and furthermore this state makes her view another marriage as a bad idea. The most crippling aspect of all of this is that she is unable to effectively communicate and form the strength of bonds necessary for the family to stay closely connected. This is becomes represented literally by her delirious behavior and physical blindness near the end of her life just prior to her death (Ruppart 2008).
Evaluation
This article provides more insight than was immediately evident in the first reading of the novel. Much of the symbolism was not immediately noticeable to me, and the combination of the extra critical thinking with the opinion of the author provided new levels of understanding. The author’s interpretation of the symbolism and causes and effects of various actions throughout the story seems fully sound and correct; nothing seems illogical or incorrect. Overall this article allowed for a more thorough analysis and comprehension of the book both in events and symbolism.
Detailed analysis
While the theme of family influence hindering a person’s personal development, and the individual’s quest to find a balance between their personal growth and growth within a family are major themes of the book, they are also obvious ones. These themes are quite plain for any reader to comprehend in the reading of this book, while any information that might have been missed or not properly considered in these areas can be summed up quick.
Isolation, in both the physical forms and emotional forms, is evident through the book. It is isolation that plays a critical or even primary role in the actions of the Tulls (Ruppart 2008). Pearl’s distrust of anyone outside of the family combined with her fear of the family splitting even further apart causes her to attempt to hold her children back from exploring and interacting with the world. At the same time, her children nonetheless are able to develop through bonds they form outside of the family (which are debatably even stronger than the family bonds.) Ezra provides one the best demonstrations of this process, as he reveals that this suffocation and lingering area of the functionality of the family plays a role in the children seeking outside bonds just to gain real emotional support. When Ezra departs for his soldier campy, he requests that Jenny cares for Josiah and Ms. Scarlatti, however does not make such a request for Pearl.
This suggests that Ezra has considered these people as his new family, while they are placed even above Ezra’s own biological mother. Ezra identifies with the feelings of being vulnerable and alone in the world with Ms. Scarlatti and Josiah. Ezra may have even, in his mind, replaced his mother with Mrs. Scarlatti in some ways, as both of these characters experienced trauma due to the less-than-responsible actions of the men that involved with their life. In his relationship with Mrs. Scarlatti, Ezra uses her to ease his emotional problems while getting the nurturing support his mother either could not offer at all or offered less readily than Mrs. Scarlatti. It is possible that Ezra’ failure although strong desire to bond with his mother that causes him to seek the company and emotional bonding of another character which is like his mother in some ways. It is the isolation from emotional needs that causes characters to find substitutes in ways that only partially meet these needs (Ruppart 2008).
Ezra’s ultimate disappointment in reuniting the family in a happy way during his years as a child causes him to look for another home, and thus causes him to be physically isolated following his initial emotional isolation. In soldier camp, Ezra writes to Jenny and Pearl of what he has found to be similar to home, “I think a lot about Scarlatti’s Restaurant and how nice the lettuce smelled when I tore it into the bowl, he wrote – his only mention of homesickness, if that was what it was. Pearl gave a jealous sniff.” (Tyler 96) Ezra reveals that the restaurant provides him with a sort of home life that caters to his emotional and creative needs, and furthermore lets him fulfill his desire to nurture others. Ezra calls this restaurant the “homesick restaurant,” and thus uses it in his attempts to bring the members of his family back together in a pleasant manner. In these actions Ezra is able to better meet his desire to nurture and cure his own sense of being homesick. Though he is emotional in these ways himself, Ezra accuses his own mother of being too emotional while his distance from his sibling cause his attempts at bring them together to fail, forcing him back into isolation and weakening his fulfillment gained in attempts to nurture. While Ezra’s emotional issues are caused from his physical separation from home life and the nostalgia of his family being whole, he does actually mention and other moments of homesickness with regards to his mother or siblings.
Jenny also shows a strong desire for emotional bonding beyond her relatives. Josiah is a character who is essentially an outcast from his educational organization, and becomes compensated in this regards at his mother’s home. This would be soon contrasted through Jenny. Jenny is intentionally regarded as an outcast by her own mother, in Pearl’s attempt to uphold a sense of family support, respect, and bonding (Ruppart 2008). Of course this is ultimately counter-productive. From Jenny’s perspective, she cannot success in offering the sense of bonding through home life and thus desires the same from people not part of the immediate family. Jenny correlates her house as something dark and akin to a jail.
As mentioned, this is in direct contrast to her perspective of Josiah’s house, as for some reason she sees this house as a haven from a fantasy story although it is very similar to her house. Jenny further describes her home from her early life as dank and oppressive, not able to recognize the danger clouding around it nor able to allow light to shine through it. This house plays a role in Jenny’s isolation from experiencing life in any real sense, and even in returning to the home Jenny feels the rooms close her off from the outside world and once again isolate her in this sense of darkness. The actions of her mother possess her while she emulated the aggressive and bothered manner of actions towards her family that her mom once displayed. Thoughout her whole life, Jenny desires to escape her sense of isolation in additional her past, all while avoiding making the same mistakes her mother had made to create those conditions (Ruppart 2008).
Concluding remarks
Isolation is a common theme in many works, and to relate to the other works studied, the theme is shared in Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken and Do Not Go Gentle Into the Good Night by Dylan Thomas. As isolation is relevant as mentioned before in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, it is arguably more relevant in Thomas’ and Frost’s work. These two poems are not strongly related to family ties as with Tyler’s novel, the isolation is more directly related to the self with regards to anyone at all, and not just a specific group.
Frost’s poem describes the journey of isolating one’s self from the mainstream path and creating one’s own path in life. The lines “Oh, I marked the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back” show the man on the journey realizing how he must separate himself from the common ways of doing things and leave all the related social support behind in the process (Frost; PoemHunter 2009). The poem is a metaphor for such a journey, as the poem itself only describes a person physically hiking on roads rather than choosing a side, but it is commonly accepted that the poem is symbolizing the journey though life with these roads.
The lines “Somewhere ages and ages hence, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference” show the satisfaction the traveller has taken in separating himself from the social support of the mainstream, showing here isolation in a positive light (Frost; PoemHunter 2009). This poem shows that sometimes, if not often times, it is better to sacrifice the social support of doing the common or expected things in life and instead simply doing what one feels is right, regardless of the amount of support. As such, sometimes isolation can be a positive thing, whether the positive effects are noticeable either immediately or eventually. Tyler’s novel does not portray the aspect of isolation in such a positive light, as the characters must find substitutes which may have further contributed to the destruction of family ties. It is arguable, however, that the family was doomed to darkness following the separation of the parents due to Pearl’s stubbornness, and as such the results of family isolation were in fact wholly positive as there was never hope in fixing the family.
Thomas’ poem deals with isolation that often comes with age, and shows the aging man being without social support and generally isolated from society while life goes on around them. As such, isolation is not shown in either a positive or negative light, but is ultimately a common condition with which the fighting of age and activity in life must be challenged. The lines “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light” express how the aging must fight the “light” disappearing in their life by making themselves more active with their surroundings (Thomas; Academy of American Poets 2009). Old people commonly sit around by themselves and wait for good things to happen to them, while they stop exercising or putting forth their own effort into involving themselves with the world. Meanwhile, they commonly become more depressed in this process. Thomas’ poem describes these conditions as they occur, with the activities fading and the “brightness” of life fading while these activities involve the aging less in less. Thomas suggests that the aging do not simply allow themselves to be disconnected, isolated, and without activity and essentially sit around and wait to die. He rather recommends that such people “rage” against this inevitability by being as lively as possible.
Works Cited
Academy of American Poets (2009). “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night- by Dylan Thomas.” Web.
Encyclopedia on World Biography (2009). “Anne Tyler Biography.” Encyclopedia on World Biography.
PoemHunter (2009). “The Road Not Taken- by Robert Frost.” Web.
Ruppart, E. (2008). “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Analysis.” Stanza, Ltd.
Ruppart, E. (2008). “Isolation in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.” Stanza, Ltd.
Tyler, A. (1996). “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.” Random House, Inc.
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