Under The Influence By Scott Russell Sanders Summary

In “Under The Influence” by Scott Russell Sanders, he articulates his childhood as being a son of an alcoholic. Sanders has his first encounter with alcoholism at a very young age as he found his father drinking. Soon, his father becomes verbally abusive towards his family. Sanders shares insecurities that came with his drunk father such as believing that if Sanders had been a more perfect child, it would have stopped his father from turning to alcohol. As an alcoholic, his father becomes a different person while under the influence. Stripped of his true self, he becomes more frightening, deceitful, and pathetic. This became the family secret for the reason that the community saw alcoholism as a disgrace. Sanders explains how his father was …show more content…
His first encounter with his intoxicated father was described as he was stumbling around the house, slamming doors, and thumping into things. As the author uses these action words to describes the noises that was heard that night, it is also allowing the audience to experience the fear a young boy, such as the author, was experiencing himself. As the author’s father encounters a near death experience, forcing him to become sober for the next fifteen years, he describes it as an almost blissful time. The father became more content, playful, and a stronger sense of a father in comparison to himself while drunk. As the author and his siblings grow older, the parents decide to move away to start a new, sober life. Sanders creates vivid imagery of what he thought would be how his father would soon go on a downwards spiral. As he takes that sip, Sanders imagines it as “...I see Father’s hands trembling in midair… I see his arm reaching, his fingers closing, the can tilting to his lips… I watch the amber liquid pour down his throat” (Sanders 95). This shows how Sanders became more fearful throughout the passage that the effect of his father’s relapse would be a repetition of his childhood. In my situation, I can recollect the constant fear I carried when I would hear my father drinking and hear the seizure that came the next day. Feeling …show more content…
Although they carried with him throughout adulthood, he provides important insights on how a child grows up with an alcoholic parent such as being shoved into the real world too soon and the disadvantages that come along with it. I believe that his struggles throughout his life give a strong sense of the lesson that a person can never fully understand the extent of what another is going through. Although both the author and myself have grown up in different degrees of alcoholism, we have encountered experiences that have set us apart from many individuals. However, I have grown up to realize that it’s not necessarily negative. Being exposed to more mature content, I have become more mature myself and have become more prone to fix my mistakes as I take on life. Sanders spent most of his childhood in Ohio and went on to get his Ph.D. in English at Cambridge University. He wrote his book, Hunting for Hope as a continued story of his childhood with his dad. Hunting for Hope focuses on his father son relationship with his own son. As him and his son become distant, he realizes that his own despair with his childhood has flooded into his son’s world. This book that he later wrote expresses the impact his childhood has on himself later down the road as well as his future relationships. Although Sanders’ and I’s situations are not ideal, I cannot hide the fact that without them, I would not be who I am