Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant An individual's perception of family is perhaps the single biggest influencer in identity formation. This is a self-evident truth given the varying personalities of siblings even though they may have been exposed to the same set of familial experiences. Each finds different methods of coping with the gap between the aspiration for an ideal family life and the actual reality of dysfunctional family structures. This, then, is the relationship between the past and each individual's identity and forms the central theme of Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Indeed, all other themes in the novel, be it survival, the need for love and belonging, or being homesick, are linked to the central theme of the relationship between the Tull family history and the personalities of each Tull family member.

The Tull family structure falls apart with the departure of Beck, the father, creating the first gap between the aspiration for an ideal family and harsh reality. Pearl, the wife...

Which they were, in fact.... They'd depended only on each other...." (11) Pearl, herself, copes through taking pride in her ability to be capable, strong and independent in bringing up her children (16). Unfortunately, the pressure of having to play both the father and mother role leads to Pearl increasingly becoming an angry mother, thereby creating the second major gap between the Tull children's perception of the ideal mother and the reality.
Pearl is so busy just coping with practical survival that she is blind to the impact of her own role in forming her children's personality till it is too late: "Cody was prone to unreasonable rages; Jenny was so flippant; Ezra really hadn't lived up to his potential.... She wondered if her children blamed her for something...they tended to recall only poverty and loneliness.... Cody, in particular, referred continually to Pearl's…