A Closed Family in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
What determines how a person will behave? Is it nature or nurture? Or, is it genetics or environments that have the most influence on human behavior? The debate over nature versus nurture has raged for over many years, arguing that people are innate within nature and nurture advocates that people learn to become what they are from the society beyond the individual’s intelligence. This argument is appropriate in determining whether Pearl Tull had always been born the way she was, fully possessed of the qualities and traits that would later define her life. Also, it is supported because the story is presented from a retrospective point of view from the beginning of the novel, with insightful evidence and poignant viewpoints from Pearl's past to accentuate her second thoughts. In addition, growing up with their mother only because they were deserted by their father, Beck; Pearl’s children, Cody, Ezra, and Jenny experience and recollect their childhood memories and future life while sharing the same events, but each experience them differently because they have different personalities and therefore, function differently from one another. Because of a lacking or dysfunctional family structure, the children of Pearl and Pearl herself become hindered into depression and isolation through inner and outer traits they gained in life.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant represents characters that are fully developed from inner and outer experiences. Therefore, the nature versus nurture idea fits perfectly in the novel. Every character has a distinct personality portrayed through the novel. In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler portrays Pearl Tull’s nature as a blind, spiteful, overbearing and miserable character that has a very low self-esteem and self-centeredness. The society feels deserted to her because her husband abandons her. As a result, her children Cody, Ezra, and Jenny are abandoned by...