When it was first published in 1982, critics hailed Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant as a great novel. De Mott, for example, called it "an extremely beautiful book" (14). Sheppard claimed that it gives the reader "the special satisfaction one gets from Anne Tyler" (78). This paper will explore five themes which are contained in the novel. The first and primary theme is the effect that a father has on his family when he abandons them. The four secondary themes all relate to the ways in which the different members of the Tull family are affected by Beck Tull's departure. Thus, this paper will consider the ways in which the wife, Pearl, and her three children, Cody, Ezra, and Jenny, experience emotional repression following Beck's mysterious disappearance.
At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Beck Tull left his family because he was a carefree traveling salesman who felt that he had rushed into marriage. More importantly, however, it is revealed that Beck felt burdened by the emotional responsibilities of running a family. He decides to leave soon after Pearl has almost died from an arrow wound which was accidentally inflicted by Cody. When Pearl nearly dies, Beck realizes that he cannot handle his emotional attachments to his family. Years later, when he sits outside the house and sees Cody confidently flip a newspaper into the air and catch it, Beck decides that his family is doing all right without him (Tyler 309). However, the truth of the matter is that Beck's disappearance has had a powerful impact on his family. specifically, his wife and children have all become emotionally repressed. Although they all react to the abandonment in different ways, they all have in common a failure to communicate or to connect emotionally with one another. In this way, the members of the Tull family reflect Beck's failure to communicate his reasons for leaving. Beck's abandonment is an important overriding the...