Summary Of Under The Influence By Scott Sanders

“Under The Influence: Paying the price of my father's booze” is an essay that was written by Scott Russell Sanders to describe his father drinking habit. In this essay, the author has used both comparisons and allegories to explain how his father’s drinking habit was very serious and how it affected his whole family. In addition, the essay describe explores the connection between excessive drinking and excessive working and compares the two. To start with, the author has talked about father’s extreme habit of alcohol drinking, stressing on the different changes his father showed every time he had a drink. Besides his father’s addiction in drinking, Sander has also talked about his lovely daughter who she also considers as an addict as well.

In that passage, Sander says “the main reason why am using the past tense not because my father never quit drinking, it’s because my father already quit living” (p. 71). On other words, Sander uses this example to show how his father’s alcoholism behavior ruined his life while in his childhood. According to Sanders, his father could not live without being alcohol. Sander shows us how life became enjoyable to him and his family. Apart from comparison and metaphors, the author has also used figurative language in describing his father’s habit. Sander successfully demonstrates to his audience the horror that can be caused if a family has an alcoholic father. On the other hand, Sander’s daughter was always working and never took time off. Sander does not say if her daughter loved her work so much that she could not leave it, but he uses the contradiction between her and his father to show the two worlds that he lived in. at one point, Sander shows how alcoholism made his father to become dishonest. In the essay, Sander says “When my father is drunk he is very dishonest, deceitful, and pathetic” (p.