ipl-logo

Scott Russell Sanders Under The Influences

812 Words4 Pages

Commentary essay on Identity In Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the Influence”

Student: Alan Ping Kin Pang
Student Number: 301120507
Student Email: alanp@sfu.ca

Course: ENGL104W, Introduction to Prose Genres, Fall 2015

Tutor Marker: Scott Marsden, October 25, 2015
Due Date: October 25, 2015
Handed In: October 25, 2015 Introduction
The purpose of this paper will be to summarize Sanders’ “Under the influence.” By analyzing and critiquing his writing style, a better understanding of the narrative approach can be learned. Additionally, making recommendations can potentially create an even more credible essay in an attempt to create awareness of the social problems present in many American families.
Scott Russell Sanders’ “Under the influence” …show more content…

Feeling Sanders fear of his father, and the “pathetic, frightening, deceitful” side of him surfaces. In addition to his writing appeal to emotions, he writes to appeal logically. Although his argument of self-blame affecting his childhood is not explicit, he uses a logical sequence of storytelling to explain all his mixed emotions towards his father. He loved, hated, and feared him but also thought he failed him. Sanders describes his mixed feelings of helplessness, responsibility, and shame. By using a narrative voice and time control of his stories, he is able to position his narratives as a form of reflection. Each claim Sanders makes about his father is fully supported by logical reasoning. After telling the illuminating Bible story of drunkards and swine, he explains that his father, “when drunk, [was] clearly in his wrong mind. He became a stranger, as fearful to us as any graveyard lunatic, not quite frothing at the mouth but fierce enough, quick-tempered, explosive; or else he grew maudlin and weepy, which frightened us nearly as much.” Due to the subjectivity of his feelings towards his father, the use of a Biblical reference creates a

Show More
Related

What Did A Typical Minority Family Resemble In The 1950's?

183 Words | 1 Pages

Question: What did a typical minority family resemble in the 1950’s? There is tremendous focus in current times on absentee fatherhood, drug use, and violence. Douglas argues this is the result of economic, governmental, and societal

Read More

Gender Roles In The Return Of Martin Guerre By Natalie Zemon Davis

1592 Words | 7 Pages

Society thinks of someone’s identity as a stagnant object that is un-swayed by the environment around them. However, there are many factors that go into what someone’s identity is. The novel “The Return of Martin Guerre” by Natalie Zemon Davis, discusses how gender roles and identity can affect a person. Both topics, gender roles and personal identity, have individual issues as well as compound issues in today’s society. They exist on their own but additionally, they influence each other.

Read More

Indian Horse By Richard Wagemese

1105 Words | 5 Pages

Exploring Identity in Literature: A Comparative Analysis Imagine living in a world where you are not recognized and respected for who you are. This is the reality for many Indigenous people who have faced centuries of assimilation. In this essay, I will compare and contrast two works of literature that explore the challenges and experiences of the Indigenous people: Indian Horse by Richard Wagemese and Borders by Thomas King. Indian Horse is a novel about an Indigenous boy named Saul, who survives the horrors of residential school. He finds an escape playing hockey, but his past haunts him which later leads him to alcoholism.

Read More

A Separate Peace Identity Essay

978 Words | 4 Pages

In John Knowles’s novel A Separate Peace Identity is shown as what defines us and makes us be placed in other peoples perspectives. An author can use identity to place characters in the readers mind to portray them a certain way, just as John Knowles did in A Separate peace. An identity can be defined as who a person is inside and out.

Read More

Julio Noboa Polanco Summary

883 Words | 4 Pages

Even though he only wrote “Identity” this poem shows so many from just reading this. When reading this poem automatically could tell how much feeling was behind this, not knowing what he has gone through. He used a situation that was all around and such a huge issue that is important to the society today. Also using an issue and putting it into a totally different story, but with the same meaning. For example, in his poem, it state “I 'd rather smell of musty, green stench than of sweet, fragrant lilac.

Read More

Scott Sanders Under The Influence Summary

906 Words | 4 Pages

Alcoholics are often used in stories as comic relief, which to a person who grew up under the shadow of alcoholism, isn’t very funny at all. This point was to illustrate that people really don’t understand alcoholism for what it really is: a disease that has devastating effects on families for generations. Instead of directly countering those misconceptions, Sanders describes his upbringing in vivid detail. He describes his father’s behavior in a way that makes the reader appreciate that there comes a point where alcoholism is not really a matter of a person having a moral weakness, a lack of self-control, or is weak-willed. It’s a disease that robs people of their lives and of themselves.

Read More

Scott Russell Sanders The Inheritance Of Tools Summary

797 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

Alcoholism In Carver's Careful

249 Words | 1 Pages

The central theme in Carver’s short story, “Careful”, revolves around addiction and dependency, which directly relates to the protagonist, Lloyd, and his reliance on alcohol. Being oblivious of his current state of dipsomania, he “moves out of the house” into solitude- living in an attic and avoids communication with the outside world. The notion of alcoholism cannot be solely blamed on the individual's self control, but rather the inherent nature of humans. As noted in the aforementioned, the tribulations and desolate state of life that Lloyd has degraded into is merely a manifestation of the cruel effects of alcoholism. Since Lloyd’s state of addiction and reliance is beyond his conscious control, sympathizing for him would be justified

Read More

Of Mice And Men American Dream Theme

1483 Words | 6 Pages

America’s Declaration of Independence provides that people have the right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. This concept of an ‘American Dream’ provides that in the land of ‘hope and opportunity’, it is possible for anyone to get rich as long as they are willing to work hard for it. However, in his novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck demonstrates that the ‘American Dream’ was an impossible ideal for most people. The ‘impossibility of the American Dream’ is one of the major themes in Steinbeck’s novel. The other major theme that will be discussed is that of ‘loneliness’.

Read More

Identities Wd Valgardson Summary

579 Words | 3 Pages

The identity a person holds is one of the most important aspects of their lives. Identity is what distinguishes people from others, although it leaves a negative stereotype upon people. In the short story Identities by W.D Valgardson, a middle-aged wealthy man finds himself lost in a rough neighborhood while attempting to look for something new. The author employs many elements in the story, some of the more important ones being stereotype and foreshadow. For many people, their personal identity is stereotyped by society.

Read More

I Like A Lion In A Zoo Figurative Language

972 Words | 4 Pages

Struggling with identity A elaborates, “I am like the fish in an aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood. ”(184). In other words, “I am like a lion in a zoo, processing life differently, changing to fit the circumstances that are not natural for me.

Read More

The Major Character In Mcewan's Atonement And Identity Crisis

845 Words | 4 Pages

Psychoanalysis is an appealing field for theoretical inquiry, and it is commonly argued that it is instrumental to the literature production and reception as well. In the previous two chapters, we have already given a general background of theories of identity and identity crisis, mainly psychological theories, and its existences in postmodern literature. In this chapter we will focus on how the major character in McEwan’s Atonement experience identity crisis relying on the social psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory of identity crisis. We will select some pertinent passages, and attempt to diagnose the character’s psychological conflicts displayed throughout the implicit and explicit characterization.

Read More

Identity In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises

993 Words | 4 Pages

Identity is a concept that the majority of people struggle with at some point in life. This the search in identity can be anything from gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, or the ways people act around others. This idea is often discussed in works of literature sometimes without the intent of doing so. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway show changes in identity through a multitude of ways that give the characters a different viewpoint of the world, or become disillusioned in their own reality. These books display the search identity in both a conscious and an unconscious way.

Read More

Briony's Psychoanalysis In Postmodern Literature

2518 Words | 11 Pages

Introduction Psychoanalysis is an appealing field for theoretical inquiry, and it is commonly argued that it is instrumental to the literature production and reception as well. In the previous two chapters, we have already given a general background of theories of identity crisis, mainly psychological theories, and its existences in postmodern literature. In this chapter, we will focus on how the major character in McEwan’s Atonement experiences identity crisis, relying on the social psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory. We will select some pertinent passages, and attempt to diagnose the character’s psychological conflicts displayed throughout the implicit and explicit characterization.

Read More

Identity And Identity In Literature

848 Words | 4 Pages

The issue of identity has been a field of interest for many researchers. They have presented many perspectives on identity, on its shifting nature, politics and complexities. To understand this complexity, it is important to establish opposites like I and him (Said, 1978; Gregory, 1994; Thrift, 1995). Identification of oneself is always related to this fact ‘who I am not’ and other people easily accept the identity of an individual which may not match to his (individual) identity even.

Read More

More about Scott Russell Sanders Under The Influences

Related Topics

Open Document