Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders
In the essay “Under the Influence,” Scott Russell Sanders uses metaphors and comparisons to describe his father’s drinking, and the connection of his excessive working and compares those two addictions. First, he talks in detail about his father’s excessive abuse of alcohol, emphasizing the transformation of this father every time he had a drink. Sander’s own daughter felt that he, too, housed an addiction, and eventually gave him a placard labeling him a “workaholic”. One of the metaphors in which Sanders illustrates his father’s compulsive consumption of alcohol in this passage, “I use the past tense not because he never quit drinking but because he quit living” (138). In this example, Sanders is emphasizing how the alcoholism that his father faced began to ruin his life, and became a necessary means of living. He forgot how to live without being intoxicated. Life was no longer enjoyable, but instead was a turbulent wave that crashed each time he gave in to the booze. Sander’s use of figurative language to describe his father’s
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Approximate Word count = 707
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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