“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” (post 3) by Anne Tyler: Characters Cody and Pearl are written as though they had multiple personality

“Cody Tull always had a girlfriend, one girl after another, and all the girls were wild about him until they met [and preferred] his brother, Ezra…Meanwhile, [Cody’s] ragged, dirty, unloved younger self, with failing grades, with a ‘U’ [Unsatisfactory] in deportment, clenched his fists and howled, ‘Why? Why always Ezra? Why that sissy pale goody-goody Ezra?” (1, p. 131).

Comment: The above is written, not like a psychological interpretation, but as though Cody’s younger self were a child-aged alternate personality, inside him, clenching his fists, etc.

Pearl Tull, mother of Cody and Ezra, says, “I know when I’m being unreasonable. Sometimes I stand outside my body and just watch it all, totally separate. 'Now, stop, I say to myself…” (1, p. 140).

Comment: In multiple personality, alternate personalities often feel they are totally separate from each other.

But since this novel is not, intentionally, about multiple personality, per se, why is the above in this novel? It is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality” and is probably in this novel only as a reflection of the psychology of the author, who probably had multiple personality trait.

1. Anne Tyler. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant [1982]. New York, Vintage Books, 2017.