Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders
In the essay "Under the Influence," Scott Russell Sanders uses metaphors and comparisons to describe his father's drinking, and the connection of his excessive working and compares those two addictions. First, he talks in detail about his father's excessive abuse of alcohol, emphasizing the transformation of this father every time he had a drink. Sander's own daughter felt that he, too, housed an addiction, and eventually gave him a placard labeling him a "workaholic". One of the metaphors in which Sanders illustrates his father's compulsive consumption of alcohol in this passage, "I use the past tense not because he never quit drinking but because he quit living" (138). In this example, Sanders is emphasizing how the alcoholism that his father faced began to ruin his life, and became a necessary means of living. He forgot how to live without being intoxicated. Life was no longer enjoyable, but instead was a turbulent wave that crashed each time he gave in to the booze. Sander's use of figurative language to describe his father's
Sanders could tell that his father drank entirely too much, even as a small child because of the care that he lacked. He realizes that his father's addiction has turned him into an addict himself, maybe not an alcoholic, but a workaholic. This in itself is never healthy for children to witness, because it breeds self-hatred and feeling of shame and guilt in them, which will haunt them the rest of their lives. This comparison shows how ugly addiction can be, and makes the readers realize that no addiction is healthy, and they both have long-term effects on family life. Each and every time his father would arrive home under the influence, all his family wanted for him was to go back to being the way that they remembered him as: tender, loving, even playful with them. Sanders tells of times he felt his father, is like a seething stranger, he would more often times come home quick-tempered, fiery, and fierce. He goes on to say "I could not help seeing my own father's mutation from sober to drunk (144). They cause one to grow up all too rapidly, and to always have a negative outlook on the world. Sanders compares his father to "Dr. Loss of control plays a central theme in this essay as well. drinking is successful in demonstrating to the reader the terror that can be of his fathers alcoholism, "Shaking her head out mother stubs out the cigarette he has left smoking in the ash try" (138), is illustrate how his father was very irresponsible and pitiful without even realizing it.
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