In the books, Human Comedy, Mama I Love You, and One Day in the Afternoon of the World William Saroyan uses the family theme.
             Saroyan makes the family the background in his books. He shows how the family has its good and bad times together, how it separates after arguments and how it comes back together to work out its problems. Another theme is the leaving of a family member through death or through abandonment.
             In Mama I Love You, the father and the mother of the main character divorce, which leaves the mother to support her daughter. Homer Macauley is a fourteen-year-old boy in Human Comedy who is struggling to support his family because his dad was killed two years ago. In One Day in the Afternoon of the World, Yep Muscat is a divorced writer in New York who is struggling in an effort to make some money.
             All of the books have one main character in them with similarities that strive for the same things. Twink in Mama I Love You is the only one with any real good judgment, common sense, and wisdom. This prevents her mother, whom she refers to as "Mama Girl", from going crazy sometimes. Homer in Human Comedy is the link keeping his family from falling apart after the death of his father. Yep Muscat in One Day in the Afternoon of the World uses other people to help him maintain his sanity as a writer.
             Mama I Love You starts out with Mama Girl, the mother of the main character Twink, getting ready for a party. The babysitter for Twink does not show up, so they both decide to fly to New York right away and start out Mama Girl's acting career. Mama Girl is very self-critical and is always putting herself down, but Twink always tells her that she is "the most beautiful and most successful girl in the whole world" (Mama 32). Mama Girl gets frustrated that she is single and a "divorced mother [who] takes a lot of criticism" (Mama 32). She hates having to raise and support Twink on her ...