Tender At the Bone Character

The character I chose was the narrator's father, Ernst. First, Ernst starts out as a gullible and easy-to-manipulate kind of man, as he is at the beck and call of his wife's eccentric and odd commands. This includes waking up early to taste the disgusting concoctions his wife makes by combining everything in their refrigerator. His daughter, the narrator, describes him to be sweet and warm and always a nice father, but as the novel goes on, his character can be recognized as naive because the author's tone is always frustrated since he does not interfere into her mother's absurd choices. The narrator's point of view is very compassionate towards him, yet wishes he would take a stand for both himself and her, as she says he was "baffled by [her] mother's moods as [she] was, and just as helpless before them," (13). He is easily controlled by his wife because he does not want to upset her at all, even when her actions are altogether ridiculous. For example, he does not object to sending his daughter to a French school in Canada or to tasting his wife's food, no matter how bad it smells or looks, because he does not want to be cruel or hurt anyone's feelings. In this way, he is immature, but his good heart and tenderness overpower his thoughtlessness in the novel.