Discuss the Character of Pearl from the Perspective of Each of Her Children: Cody, Ezra and Jenny - Essay Example

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is Anne Tyler's ninth book. It was a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner and the Pulitzer Prize Award in 1983. Anne Tyler thinks of the book as her best work. This article will discuss the book, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. It will talk about the Tull family and its dynamics when the Tull’s were children as well as adults. It will also state who makes the decisions in the Tull family and how the family copes with conflicts. The Tull family is a single-parent family with only a mother figure, Pearl Tull, as their head. Mrs. Tull is a firm perfectionist.

She has three children with her partner, an itinerant salesman Beck, who deserts the family (Tyler 6). After Beck goes away, Pearl fights to uphold a front as if everything is okay. Cody, the eldest, is wild and audacious, but is jealous of his sibling Ezra, whom he thinks is Pearl's favorite. As they mature, this plays out in never-ending mischief. Ezra is submissive, and never endeavors to take revenge on Cody. He is nurturing and charming. These qualities regularly interest Cody's girlfriends and add to Cody's bitterness.

Ezra works at a restaurant, which he later manages and eventually takes over, while Cody turns out to be a rich and successful fitness specialist. When Ezra becomes engaged to his superstar chef, Ruth, Cody becomes passionate of luring her from Ezra. Cody eventually succeeds, but his marriage to Ruth is not straightforward. Ezra never pulls through from the break up and stays at home with his mother, Pearl. Ezra is a caregiver for both Pearl and his clients, but this is underlain by sorrow. Jenny is the youngest child and the most learned of the Tull’s, however, in university, she marries abruptly, and she ends up with unhappy results.

Only in Jenny’s third marriage to a man with a bundle of children whose spouse has deserted him does she discover steadiness in family life and her thriving career as a pediatrician. A frequent scene in the book involves Ezra's failed attempts to convey the family together for a meal at his Homesick Restaurant. This reflects his aspiration to fuse and restore the family. At Pearl's funeral, their father, Beck returns to the children for the first time. Nonetheless, they never appear to be capable of getting through a single meal without disagreements, this time with Cody blaming his father for the family troubles (Tyler 67).

Clearly this is not a happy family. Cody Tull, the most affected by the failure of his parents' companionship becomes a violent and argumentative fitness specialist. He thinks that it is his blunder that Beck, the father, leaves particularly when they bring up the shot event at the restaurant. Cody never thinks of his siblings as a family as he states whether they think they were a family when in reality they are tattered apart, tattered all over the place. He never pulls through the thought of his father leaving the family behind.

The hopefulness of Ezra was also never recognized by the family, although, he never allowed his past to influence his life and little things worried him. This is tough as, living with people who never recognize a person’s efforts to unite them is disappointing. The family does not recognize his hopefulness since Cody disliked it, Jenny overlooked it and Pearl misinterpreted it. His optimism was shown when his brother, Cody, reflected on their early days, on how terrible it was and the way their mother was a screeching witch.

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