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 familyÂ…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......
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Approximate Word Count: 908
Approximate Pages: 4 (260 words per double-spaced page) |