A Study Of Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant From The Perspective Of Althusser's Theory Of Ideology

Anne Tyler is one of the most famous female Pulitzer-winner writers in contemporary America.Her works about family life enjoy a great reputation in the literary world and are widely welcomed by readers.Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of her masterpieces and the most popular one among critics.It vividly reflects the Tulls' pursuit of the ideal family which is never realized.Although it's a tragedy full of marital and parent-child conflicts,it reflects the status quo of contemporary American family life from a certain perspective.This thesis intends to explore the main causes of the family tragedy and the efforts of family members under the imprisonment of ideology in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant from the perspective of Althusser's theory of ideology.Firstly,it analyzes the construction of their ideal family under the interpellation of ruling ideology,which is a nuclear one features sexual division of labor and co-parenting.However,their real-life conditions of this model actually fall apart,family members become victims of ideology.As an Ideological State Apparatus,their family is finally disintegrated.Besides,by analyzing the efforts and failures of family members to reconstruct the ideal,this thesis further reveals the imaginary ideology misguides subjects and their reconstruction under the imprisonment of ideology is bound to fail.Finally,this thesis points out the characteristics of the youngest daughter Jenny's three conceptions reflect the intention of the contemporary American to break the family myth of the nuclear family.Taking Jenny as an example,it explores how individuals break the ideological imprisonment to understand the reality better,thereby reduce the negative impact of ideology and pursue happiness.Based on Althusser's theory of ideology,this thesis indicates that Anne Tyler's detailed description of the Tulls' family life reflects the complex real-life conditions and family relationships of American families from the 1920 s to the 1970 s,and reveals the development and transformation of American family patterns in the past half century by depicting the characters' breakthrough in the ruling ideology.