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Summary Of Under The Influence Scott Sanders

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“Under the Influence” is Scott Russell Sanders’ recollection of his childhood burdens created by his alcoholic father. Through this essay, Sanders reveals the impact of alcoholism on himself, his father, their family as well as his own children. The following commentary will examine the various languages used in Sanders’ essay and the most significant as well as difficult aspect of this essay. In the first half of his essay, Sanders describes his sufferings and emotional struggles as a child with an alcoholic father he never understood. Sanders reveals how his father’s alcoholism has not only corrupted their family, but how it has also carried on to affecting his own children as well. Through this essay, Sanders allowed us to see the development of his understanding of alcoholism from his childhood perspective to his current perspective as an adult at age 42. Due a lack of understanding about “alcoholism,” Sanders suffered emotionally from being unable to recognize his father’s addiction, which made him feel remorseful for not being to clear his father’s disappointments. …show more content…

This essay is written in Sanders’ present perspective, where he is able to make sense of the difficulties of his youth and understand how it has continued to affect him till this day. Eventually, Sanders made many realizations, and one knowing that his father was an alcoholic man who was being consumed by disease rather than by disappointment. Another being the fear he clenches onto that someday he may lose himself to become the uncontrollable alcoholic that his father could never

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The paragraph in Sanders’ essay that explains the story behind the handle of his hammer and how he had broken it several times uses an anecdotal story to convey Sanders’ attitude towards his father 's death. The speaker broke his hammer’s handle once by attempting to “pull sixteen-penny nails out of floor joists”; an idea even the speaker admitted was foolish. His father’s response of “You ever hear of a crowbar?” captures the relationship Sanders had with his father. His father was sarcastic at his son’s humorous and avoidable failure, indicating a close relationship between the two. This revelation of the closeness he had with his father conveys the feelings of sadness the speaker would have immediately after his death.

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