The Accidental Tourist Questions and Answers
by Anne Tyler

The ending is subtle, but highly effective. The moment that Macon tells the cab to pull over and pick up Muriel represents a couple of things. The first is that he is willing to put aside the...

I think that some of the important quotes have to relate to emotional disposition and how individuals view consciousness through their emotions. Macon is the subject of this throughout Tyler's...

In Anne Tyler’s novel, Macon and Sarah Leary are a married couple grieving for their son, Ethan, who was murdered. Not only was this terrible loss heart-wrenching for both of them, but the absence...

The ending certainly gives us the idea that Macon and Muriel will get back together. The turning point for Macon is when he injures his back in Paris, and Sarah comes to take care of him. The time...

Rose is not entirely a bad character. She is not shown to be one who is excessively mean- spirited or emotionally hurtful. Yet, if one were to draw up a list of negative characteristics about...

Macon's siblings (Rose, Charles, and Porter) are much like Macon--they are reclusive, they value order, and they cling to the "Leary way" of doing things. Muriel's neighborhood and...

I don't think the story is a commentary about modern marriage as much as it is about what happens to Macon after the tragic death of his son and what he discovers about himself in the process of...

In this question, I think I am going to focus on the characters that play a major role in the thematic development of the novel. In my mind, I see eight primary characters. From this, one can...

I think that one of the basic differences between both Macon and Sarah is how they see and view the issue of grief. Both of them experience this with the loss of the child, but I think that Macon...

Anne Tyler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons, and eighteen other books, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) and The Accidental Tourist (1985). The two books,...

Overall, the basic challenge in this question is that there is a desire to extrapolate social concerns out of a primarily personal setting. The book and the characters operate out of their own...