In the following excerpt, Manning argues that Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant takes the familiar figure of the wandering adventurer and portrays him as "irresponsible, vain, and self-centered" by showing the effects of his absence on his family. She compares his role in Tyler's novel to that of King McLain in Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples.
A familiar and appealing figure of the hero ill narrative is that of the adventurer who wanders either alone or with male comrades in quest of some goal or ill simple harmony with natl1re. He encounters heroic adventures along the way. The image has come down to us from Odysseus, is seen in American fiction in a character such as James Fennimore Cooper's Natty Bumppo, and has received wide circulation through western movie heroes such as Shane and the Lone.....
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