the accidental tourist paragraph

The Accidental Tourist

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 1985

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Ever since Ethan died I’ve had to admit that people are basically bad. Evil, Macon. So evil they would take a twelve-year-old boy and shoot him through the skull for no reason. I read a paper now and I despair; I’ve given up watching the news on TV. There’s so much wickedness, children setting other children on fire and grown men throwing babies out second-story windows, rape and torture and terrorism, old people beaten and robbed, men in our very own government willing to blow up the world, indifference and greed and instant anger on every street corner.

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The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

• Publication Date: April 9, 2002
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN-10: 0345452003
• ISBN-13: 9780345452009
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• CBSE Notes For Class 9
• Class 9 English Notes and Summary
• Supplementary Chapter 9 The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist Summary & Notes - CBSE Class 9 English Moments

According to the CBSE Syllabus 2023-24, this chapter has been removed from  NCERT Class 9 English (Moments) textbook .

Summary of The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist is a story which reflects the humorous travel experiences of the author. He encounters unexpected hassles while travelling that call for trouble and embarrasses him immensely. Read the prose summary of CBSE Class 9 English Prose Notes – The Accidental Tourist in CBSE English Notes Class 9 format here to explore in detail. We hope this summary will help students to understand this chapter easily and prepare for their English exam with confidence.

Students can also learn how to write an effective essay by going through the essays to increase marks in Class 9 English papers.

CBSE Class 9 English The Accidental Tourist Summary

The Accidental Tourist is an entertaining story written by Bill Bryson, where he reflects on his travel experiences humorously. He casually describes the various incidents that took place while he was travelling to different places. He often acts clumsily and finds it difficult to manage things systematically. He wonders how other people do their regular work easily without any difficulty. A couple of times, he fails to locate the washroom in the movie theatre and ends up standing in a narrow passage of the door that locks by itself. He has a hard time living a normal life like other people and wonders how others do it so effortlessly.

Once, the author was travelling to England with his family during Easter. After reaching Logan Airport in Boston, while they were checking in, he abruptly remembered that he had joined the British Airways’ frequent flyer programme. He recollected that he had put the card in the carry-on bag that was dangling around his neck. When he tried opening the bag, the zip was clogged, and he exerted pressure to open it. In the process, the zip snapped, and everything that was kept inside the bag started spilling all over the place. Meanwhile, the author also noticed that his finger was injured and trapped in the zip. He was terrified at the sight that his finger was bleeding extensively.

Further, the author mentions the unexpected troubles that he encounters while travelling. In one such instance, while travelling in an aeroplane, he leaned over to tie his shoelace. Unfortunately, he was stuck when the person sitting ahead of him fully reclined his seat. With great difficulty, he freed himself from that cramped position. In another instance, he spilt some soft drinks on his co-passenger. Although the flight attendant cleaned up the mess, the author spilt another drink on the same passenger again. The lady was completely drenched and annoyed at the author for the inconvenience he caused her.

However, his worst experience on a flight was when he was writing in a notebook, and he sucked on the tip of the pen. At that time, he was also talking to a lady. Later when he went to the washroom, he saw that the pen had leaked unknowingly and ended up colouring his teeth, tongue and mouth in blue colour ink. He ended up feeling awkward for being so clumsy. Although the author is a gentleman, he always ends up in some cumbersome situation. His wife was well aware of his clumsiness. So, whenever food was delivered on the flight, she would instruct her children to remove the lid off the food for their father so that they could avoid any mishap from happening.

Nonetheless, the author clarifies that such unforeseen situations occur, particularly when he is travelling with his family. Whenever he travels alone, things work perfectly as he quietly sits on his seat and avoids tying his shoelaces if required. He avoids making mistakes while he is travelling on his own. He admits that he has been careless in updating his frequent flyer card due to time constraints. On multiple occasions, he either forgot to request the air miles from the airline authorities, or sometimes the airline didn’t record it on time. Furthermore, he mentions that there were instances when the airline informed him that he was not entitled to use air miles. Once due to a mismatch in his name on the ticket, he could not use his air miles and was left ineligible to travel to Bali on a first-class ticket.

Conclusion of The Accidental Tourist

The chapter – The Accidental Tourist teaches students that it is important to be organised and systematic in our lives, especially while travelling. We should be well-prepared; otherwise, we are likely to encounter unexpected mishaps like the author. Here, we brought you the CBSE Class 9 English Moments Prose Summary of The Accidental Tourist that will help students to have a solid insight into the chapter.

Besides, BYJU’S offers a huge collection of resources such as CBSE Notes and CBSE study materials . They can download BYJU’S – The Learning App and also check out CBSE sample papers and question papers.

Frequently Asked Questions on CBSE Class 9 English The Accidental Tourist

Why is it important for a student to be organised in life.

For students, being organised is particularly important since it helps them learn how to prioritise activities, set and achieve goals and reduce stress.

How should one be conscious and aware during travel?

1. Don’t drink bottled water from unknown shops/people 2. Avoid the tourist trap locations 3. Travel in off-season 4. Choose proper accommodation

What is the meaning of ‘unforeseen situation’?

Any situation that is not anticipated or expected is called an ‘unforeseen situation’.

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The Accidental Tourist Short Summary in English

Introduction.

Travelling is a nightmare for the narrator who always messes things up while travelling.

Travelling Mess

The narrator feels surprised by seeing people do things that he cannot. He is forgetful and confused all the time. One day, when the narrator went on a trip to England along with his family. He had come to know that he has joined the frequent flyer club.

While trying to tuck the card in, the bag zipper gave up, and everything ejected out of the bag. The narrator�s finger was stuck in the zipper, and blood was oozing out. The narrator always had a catastrophe while travelling.

Stupidity or Misfortune?

On another occasion, the narrator once spilt a soft drink on a lady sitting beside him. When the attendant came and cleaned her up, the narrator spilt the drink again. He felt humiliated and had to hear some of the most gruesome abuses. But according to the narrator, this was not the worst thing that he had experienced on a plane.

Once, while talking to a beautiful lady, he had this tip of his pen in his mouth, and it happened so that the pen had leaked and blue ink was scattered all over his mouth and face. Every daily life event had left an indelible mark on his personality because he had never completed a task without messing things up.

Different Names

The narrator could never use his frequent flyer card because he would forget his card or forget to claim the benefits to the concerned authorities. One day, when he remembered his card, the attendant refused to give him the benefits as the card and the ticket had different names on them. It was an absolute misfortune for the narrator.

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The Accidental Tourist

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The Accidental Tourist

1988 · Film

After the death of his son, Macon Leary, a travel writer, seems to be sleep walking through life. Macon's wife, seems to be having trouble too, and thinks it would be best if the two would just split up. After the break up, Macon meets a strange outgoing woman, who seems to bring him back down to earth. After starting a relationship with the outgoing woman, Macon's wife seems to think that their marriage is still worth a try. Macon is then forced to deal many decisions.

Anne Tyler , Frank Galati , and Lawrence Kasdan

• Warner Bros.

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The Accidental Tourist

56 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-20

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Travel and Tourism

The motif of travel and tourism helps support the theme of emotional distance as explored throughout the novel. With Macon’s job as a writer for travel guides, he is regularly jetting off to different cities and countries to update the information in his guidebooks. His travel creates regular physical distance between Macon and those he cares about, which translates into emotional distance that affects Macon’s relationships.

However, Macon doesn’t feel like a tourist just when traveling. Upon returning from his trip to London, he finds he’s unfamiliar with his marital home now that Sarah is gone. He explains this disconnect by relating it to his guidebook, referring to himself as an “ Accidental Tourist at Home ” (42). Macon also sees his relationship with Muriel as a form of tourism, referring to her street as “the foreign country that was Singleton Street” (202) and later feeling “like someone demonstrating how well he got on with the natives” when Charles visits Muriel’s home. This motif helps to explain the distance Macon feels and maintains between certain people and aspects of his life.

Photographs

Photographs and portraits symbolize pieces of a person and play an important role in two separate chapters. First, in Chapter 5, after moving in with his siblings, Macon describes the history and backstory of a commissioned portrait of him and his siblings that hangs in their family home. This portrait is juxtaposed with lengthy descriptions of the peculiar habits and rituals that the Leary children share, such as regularly eating baked potatoes and playing a convoluted card game they’d come up with as children. Later, as they sit around the card table, Macon realizes how little of his life has changed since they were children sitting for the portrait and feels “a jolt of something very close to panic” at the thought that “here he still was! The same as ever” (78). He recognizes the piece of himself in that portrait is still how he sees his life today and becomes upset that so little has changed.

Later, in Chapter 13, photographs help reveal pieces of Muriel to Macon. As they visit her parents’ house, she shows him the photo album full of her childhood photos. Macon acknowledges that an immutable part of their relationship is their age gap by observing that all her childhood photos are in color while his are in black and white. As they flip through the pages, Macon takes in pieces of Muriel at several different ages, noting how “the chubby blonde turned thin and dark and sober and then vanished altogether, replaced by the infant Claire” (212). As the pictures of Muriel taper off, she appears to harden as a person. The sharp decline in photos of Muriel shows the way her parents lost interest in her as she grew older. At the end of the chapter, Muriel gives Macon a photo of herself as a toddler, which Macon takes to mean that she wanted “to give him the best of her” (219). Overall, photos and portraits act as pieces of a person in the past. For Macon, the portrait gives perspective on how little he’s changed, while for Muriel, the photos reveal how much she’s changed.

Edward symbolizes Macon’s unresolved grief, primarily in the novel's first half. As his marriage dissolves, Macon struggles to handle the weight of his grief over losing both Ethan and now Sarah . Edward’s misbehavior begins to escalate during this time, symbolizing the way Macon is losing control of how his grief affects him. When his siblings ask why Macon cannot get rid of Edward, Macon’s answer is simply “he was Ethan’s” (62), revealing how closely tied Edward is to Macon’s memory of Ethan. At the beginning of the novel, Macon struggles to find someone to unload Edward onto while traveling, but he eventually finds Muriel , who is willing to board Edward. This parallels how Macon struggles to unload his grief until he forms a relationship with Muriel later on.

When Macon is most intensely affected by his grief during his panic attack in the skyscraper restaurant, he calls home to learn that “Edward went into one of his fits” (155) and has Charles cornered in the pantry. In a way, Macon has also cornered Charles by demanding Charles must “get [him] out of here” (154). In the same way that Charles is unequipped to handle Edward, Charles also can do nothing to help Macon through his crisis. Edward’s behavior here mirrors Macon’s desperation for help handling his grief.

As Macon forms a relationship with Muriel, Edward’s behavior steadily improves. Parallel to how Muriel trains Edward to be a good dog, Muriel coaxes Macon out of his “capsule” and shows him how to interact with the world and handle his grief. Once Macon has resolved much of his grief surrounding Sarah and Ethan, Edward fades into the background and continues to be a well-behaved dog.

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The Accidental Tourist

by Anne Tyler

The accidental tourist summary and analysis of chapters four, five, and six.

Chapter Four opens with Macon waking up to a phone call and dreaming that it is Ethan calling him. When his phone rings again and he wakes up for real, he is disappointed to realize it is not Ethan but rather his boss calling him. His boss, Julian, asks when he can expect the manuscript for his new travel guide, and Macon answers flatly that it will take him a while to organize. Over the next few weeks, Macon stalls on writing his guidebook and instead takes to reorganizing the house with “new systems.”

Neighbors start to call Macon and invite him to dinner, having found out that Sarah left him. Despite their warmth, Macon feels that his neighbors are strangers to him. Sarah always liked crowds and had been social, until the last year of their marriage, when she became more isolated, especially after the death of Ethan. Sarah and Macon met at a mixer party in 1958, when they were 17 years old. Macon, seeing Sarah from afar, had believed she was unattainable. Sarah perceived Macon as looking “stuck-up” when they first met.

As a teenager, Macon lived with his grandparents and his grandfather would drive Sarah and Macon around, often embarrassing him. Macon went off to college at Princeton, where he missed Sarah. They reunited the next summer and had their first sexual encounter. The spring they graduated from college, they got married. Macon got a job at a factory while Sarah taught English at a private school.

Back in the present, Macon is trying to work on his travel guide. It is the end of August, nearing his deadline, and he is only at the introduction. He receives a call from Muriel, who asks about Edward and tries to set up a date with Macon under the guise of training the dog. Macon turns her down. In September, Macon’s mental health declines. He comes up with a new “system” of dressing, wearing sweatsuits all the time. Resistant to leaving the house, Macon orders groceries to be delivered but ends up ranting to the grocery clerk instead.

One night, Macon falls in the basement after trying to help the dog down the stairs. He ends up breaking his leg and goes to his family’s house to recover. There, he lives with his sister Rose and his brothers Porter and Charles, who are also divorced. Macon thinks back to how his grandfather commissioned a portrait of him and his siblings. This was when his mother, Alicia , was still part of the children’s lives. He recalls how his mother was always changing and acting erratically, such as dating different men. Eventually, she decided to marry a new man and sent her children to live with their grandparents in Baltimore. After moving in with their grandparents, Alicia only occasionally came to see the children, usually bringing gifts and remarking how “stodgy” the children grew to be, claiming they took after their father in that regard.

Macon feels disconnected with the outside world, having informed neither Sarah nor his boss Julian about his injury. One day, Macon’s former neighbor, Garner, comes to the Leary family house. He was worried after seeing Macon’s mail piling up and thought that he might have died. Garner encourages him to get back together with Sarah, but Macon does not want to hear it. Garner points out that after Ethan’s death, Macon always refused help from his neighbors, who were eager to assist him in his time of need. Garner also informs him that Muriel has come looking for him while he has been away.

In October, Macon’s boss Julian visits him at the family house to check up on the project. Julian has only received the first 2 chapters from Macon and is worried about him. Macon is forced to tell Julian about his broken leg and his separation from Sarah. Macon thinks back to how he first met Julian, after Julian read Macon’s freelance piece about a crafts fair in Washington and proposed the idea of writing travel guides for people who hate to travel.

As Julian leaves, Edward the dog becomes very aggressive and bites Macon on the hand. His siblings suggest that Macon give Edward away, as he is too much of a nuisance. Macon says that he can’t, thinking about how Edward once belonged to Ethan. Macon says he perhaps will contact the animal hospital to sign Edward up for training classes, but he keeps putting it off. Over the next few days, Edward continues to act out, biting and lunging at people. Finally, Macon decides to call Muriel.

Muriel is delighted to hear from Macon and says she can help train Edward—she will even charge him half the price she usually charges people. This confuses Macon, who has not quite picked up on the fact that Muriel has taken a liking to him. They make an appointment for the next day. Macon’s siblings are surprised that he is making the effort to train Edward.

In these chapters, we see the character of Macon undergo challenging changes in his life. The tragic death of his son and his separation from his wife of 20 years are momentous events that he has not truly learned to deal with, and thus he compensates for his emotional crisis by becoming even more rigid in his organizational “systems”—systems which are actually so nonsensical that they only cause Macon and his pets more difficulty. This is reflected in the way that Macon ends up breaking his leg after trying to get the dog to go downstairs to eat as part of his new feeding system.

This injury is the climax of a steady decline in Macon’s mental health. Macon’s personality is one that already tends to isolate himself from outside support, as alluded to by his neighbor Garner's disappointment that Macon refuses help after the death of his son. With the added stress of grief, what were once peculiar tendencies have morphed into something even more harmful for his well-being, where he cuts himself off completely from the external world. This is demonstrated in Macon’s refusal to go outside for grocery shopping and his nasty rant aimed at an innocent store clerk on the phone. We can observe that Macon at least retains some self-awareness of his condition, such as when he thinks to himself, after looking in the mirror, that he seems like “a patient in a mental hospital.” This self-consciousness is perhaps the only factor preventing Macon from becoming totally immersed in his own anxiety and eccentric habits.

In this way, his broken leg is a blessing, as it brings Macon out of his isolation to spend time with his family. By getting to know his siblings—Rose, Charles, and Porter—the reader begins to understand Macon better. Like Macon, his siblings are equally obsessed with strict and eccentric systems of organization, such as alphabetizing the food in the kitchen. We learn some of the Leary family history, like the way their mother behaved very erratically, always moving homes and dating different men, eventually leaving the 4 children to live with their grandparents. Thus it can be inferred that the instability of their early life produced adults like Macon and his siblings, who live by imposing tight control over their surroundings.

With all the unfortunate circumstances in Macon’s life—the loss of a child, a broken leg, a divorce, a lack of motivation for his work—the reader is made to wonder if he will succumb to the difficulty or rise up to embrace change. One opportunity for change presented to Macon is through the presence of Muriel, the dog trainer who works at the animal hospital and who has taken a major interest in Macon. For now, it seems Macon is totally resistant to engaging in any relationship with her beyond the practical necessity of training Edward. All he can do is compare Muriel to Sarah, noting the difference in their voices and their manner of speech. However, the way Muriel keeps reappearing in the story foreshadows that she will be playing an important role in the plot, providing an opportunity for Macon to get out of his routine comfort zone.

On one level, Macon desires change, yet on another level, he is having trouble leaving the past behind. We can see through his thoughts and dreams that he is still very much immersed in memories of Sarah and Ethan. It is particularly hard to break away from his former wife because she was Macon’s first and only love; they originally got together when they were teenagers. And reminders of Ethan appear to Macon in the most surprising of places, such as the painted portrait of Macon and his siblings, where he can see Ethan’s smile in his own, or even in Edward the dog, who was once Ethan’s beloved pet.

The narrator continues to flesh out the characters through physical descriptions, with lots of small details that reveal important personality traits. For example in Chapter 4, Tyler paints a picture of Macon and Sarah in high school. Their choice of outfits— Macon in a black turtleneck, and Sarah in something pink— is a seemingly minute description that actually reveals much about the characters' developmental stages. Macon’s coolness continues to the present tense of the novel, where his standoffish behavior has led to his current difficult life situations. Macon is aware of his cold temperament, and yet he has no idea how else to be.

The Accidental Tourist Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Accidental Tourist is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Standing water in the road is compared to a wide lake.

A wide lake, it seemed, in the center of the highway crashed against the underside of the car and slammed it to the right.

How does Macon meet Muriel?

Macon meets Muriel when he hires her to train his dog.

How is Macon described in Chapter 1?

From the text:

He was a tall, pale, gray-eyed man, with straight fair hair cut close to his head, and his skin was that thin kind that easily burns.

Study Guide for The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist study guide contains a biography of Anne Tyler, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Accidental Tourist
• The Accidental Tourist Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.

• The Accidental Acceptance: Family and Modernity in 'The Accidental Tourist' and 'Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant'

Lesson Plan for The Accidental Tourist

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Accidental Tourist
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Accidental Tourist Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Accidental Tourist

• Introduction