“Under the influence” is a self portrait of Scott Russell Sanders. Sanders use of the present tense in “under the influence” helps make it clear that the memories of his father’s drinking haunt him this way. These memories effect his present relationship with his own son. This essay is personal but delineates the situation of every third family in the world. Sanders essay is personal and public where many readers can associate with their own story.
The author initiates his essay describing his father's drinking as he says “In the perennial presence of the memory”(Sander36) by which he states that he is still living in that old memory . He drank as a gut- punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food – compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living,”(Sanders 36). Then in his enduring poignant memory, he illuminates how he bursts in a garage to peek at his alcoholic father’s bottles hidden in paper bags. He even discussed how his father’s alcoholism made him the quintessential and responsible son. The author’s mother tried a lot to transform his father’s nasty habit, but everything in vain.“The secret bores under the skin, gets in the blood, into the bone, and stays there. Long after you have supposedly been cured of malaria, the fever can flare up, the tremors can shake you. So it is with the fevers of shame,”( Sanders 38)where he describes shame. The author says that he spent his youth observing the transformation of his father from sober to a drunkard. He says his father became horrendous and brutal in his drunkard state. These memories have created huge impact on him and he feels that he is still in his childhood state and these nasty memories. He even juxtaposes his father’s state with the Bible story of a drunkard, in which he says that his father has also attached with the “unclean spirits” as written in the bible; now he understands that liquor is that unclean spirit. Sanders illustrated that the alcoholism sometimes made his father sentimental; his father’s emotions were controlled by the alcohol. “When the drink made him weepy, a father would pack a bag and kiss each of us children on the head, and announce from the front door that he was moving’’( sanders 42). His father always scared him of a whipping( as he removed his belt) but he never did anything to them or their mother. It shows that Sanders has lived in the fearful environment while he was growing up. He was always in fear of beating from his father. He thinks that his son is being captured in the same situation as he was in his adolescence, because he himself has become workaholic these days and sometimes he is angered; when he is in certain moods, his son feels responsible for his father’s behaviour due to his mood alterations. Sanders thought himself of being responsible for his father's condition and spent his childhood in peccability and stupefaction. He is still living in guilt due to the influence that his father
The author initiates his essay describing his father's drinking as he says “In the perennial presence of the memory”(Sander36) by which he states that he is still living in that old memory . He drank as a gut- punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food – compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living,”(Sanders 36). Then in his enduring poignant memory, he illuminates how he bursts in a garage to peek at his alcoholic father’s bottles hidden in paper bags. He even discussed how his father’s alcoholism made him the quintessential and responsible son. The author’s mother tried a lot to transform his father’s nasty habit, but everything in vain.“The secret bores under the skin, gets in the blood, into the bone, and stays there. Long after you have supposedly been cured of malaria, the fever can flare up, the tremors can shake you. So it is with the fevers of shame,”( Sanders 38)where he describes shame. The author says that he spent his youth observing the transformation of his father from sober to a drunkard. He says his father became horrendous and brutal in his drunkard state. These memories have created huge impact on him and he feels that he is still in his childhood state and these nasty memories. He even juxtaposes his father’s state with the Bible story of a drunkard, in which he says that his father has also attached with the “unclean spirits” as written in the bible; now he understands that liquor is that unclean spirit. Sanders illustrated that the alcoholism sometimes made his father sentimental; his father’s emotions were controlled by the alcohol. “When the drink made him weepy, a father would pack a bag and kiss each of us children on the head, and announce from the front door that he was moving’’( sanders 42). His father always scared him of a whipping( as he removed his belt) but he never did anything to them or their mother. It shows that Sanders has lived in the fearful environment while he was growing up. He was always in fear of beating from his father. He thinks that his son is being captured in the same situation as he was in his adolescence, because he himself has become workaholic these days and sometimes he is angered; when he is in certain moods, his son feels responsible for his father’s behaviour due to his mood alterations. Sanders thought himself of being responsible for his father's condition and spent his childhood in peccability and stupefaction. He is still living in guilt due to the influence that his father