Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant Analysis

Throughout the novel, "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant," the best of Pearl and her children affect the characters in many ways. Jenny, Ezra, and Cody were all influenced by their traumatic childhood of an absent father and negligent mother. Cody and Ezra show that their brotherly connection had stayed the same and negatively influenced their adulthood and Jenny began to follow in the footsteps of her mother. The past events of the novel have negatively affected both Jenny's relationships, and Cody's attitude and actions. Within the novel, Jenny is unable to make permanent connections and form healthy relationships because of her past abuse from her mother. Throughout Jenny's teenage years, she is often verbally abused by her mother, and prevented from making strong friendships or relations with her peers: "What’s wrong with us, I’d like to know? Aren’t we good enough for my own blood daughter? Doesn’t she feel I’m doing my best, my level best, to provide? Does she have to pick up riff raff? Does she have to bring home scam?" (Taylor 52) The abuse from Pearl and the constant moving made it difficult for the children to make any sorts of friends. Jenny and her brothers were often punished if they were not home by a certain time and verbally called a, "serpent," "cockroach," ad "hideous
Jenny Tull makes horrible decisions concerning her relationships- a bad boyfriend and three marriages- because she never grew up in a healthy relationship household, doomed to suffer the same fate as her mother. Cody grows up envious of his brother that he thought got everything, turning him into a possessive husband and distanced father; him too doomed to suffer similar fates as his father. Unresolved issues of a characters' past have a way to negatively influence their life in future actions, attitude, and