Reader Response Essay

Matt Williams

Wendy

English 1010

October 18, 2007

Reader Response Essay

In Sanders’ essay “Under the Influence”, he describes his childhood, and how it was ravaged by his father’s alcoholism. He tells us about how he and his family never mention to anyone about how his father was a drunk, but always remain silent about it. He tells us his father’s dry spells, which were when Sanders’ sister was born, and how “the shock of fatherhood sobered him.” (Sanders 741) and he stayed sober until they moved to Ohio in 1951. “There I turned six and started school and woke into a child’s flickering awareness, just in time to see my father begin sneaking swigs in the garage.” (Sanders 741) Sanders goes on to describe how his father almost dies, and is warned by the doctors to stop drinking or the next binge will kill him. He takes what they say to heart, and doesn’t touch the stuff for fifteen years. Then after he has retired, he is offered a beer by the people helping him move, and he gets back into drinking, and it eventually kills him.

Right off the bat Sanders gets my attentions as he talks about his father. “He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (Sanders 733) Here I see just how badly Sanders’ father drank. I see the boxer gasping for breath, and I also see that hungry dog, and his analogy makes a distinct point in my mind, that his father was as addicted to alcohol as I am to oxygen. I start to realize the pain Sanders went through as a child, and I start to sympathize and feel bad for him. I also get the impression that this is not going to be a particularly happy, joy-filled essay. I get the impression that Sanders is both hurt and angry: hurt from a father who was not always himself, who wasted both time and money to the drink, and angry that his father acted how he did towards him and his family.

Throughout his childhood, Sanders remembers when he and his siblings would watch their father get out of the car once he got home from work and stager up to the house and into his overstuffed chair and fall asleep. “All evening, until our bedtimes, we tiptoe past him, as past a snoring dragon.” (Sanders 733) Here I see their fear of waking him up and feeling his wrath. He awakens the image in my mind of Harry Potter flying around a dragon trying to steal an egg out from its nest in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With such imagery even I get fearful for him, memory or not. Once Sanders’ father finally awakened, he and his wife would argue, ending in the wife fleeing to the bedroom weeping, which leaves the father to rummage through the house. “Whatever my brother and sister and mother may be thinking on their own rumpled pillows, I lie there hating him, loving him, fearing him, knowing I have failed him.” (Sanders 734) Here I imagine a confused little boy, not knowing quite what to think, quite what to feel, wishing that there was something that he could do to make his father better, and thinking it was his fault why his father drinks.

Throughout the essay, I get the feeling that Sanders is writing this essay with a feeling of sorrow. “In a matter of minutes, the contents of a bottle could transform a brave man into a coward, a buddy into a bully, a gifted athlete and skilled carpenter and shrewd businessman into a bumbler. No dictionary of synonyms for drunk would soften the anguish of watching our prince turn into a frog.” (Sanders 735) The word choice that Sanders uses here paints us the picture of someone becoming their opposite: the courageous man turn tail, friend turned enemy, the successful businessman turned into a bum, prince turned into frog. Here Sanders relates to us how he was deprived of his father throughout his childhood.

Throughout the essay I feel a sense of anger towards those who supply alcohol. “Because the Mom and Pop who ran the dump were neighbors of ours, living just down the tar-blistered road, I hated them all the more for poisoning my father. I wanted to sneak in their store and smash the bottles and set fire to the place. I also hated the Gallo brothers. . . I noted the Gallo brothers’ address . . . because I meant to go out there and tell Ernest and Julio what they were doing to my father, and then, if they showed no mercy, I would kill them.” (Sanders 737) I can definitely feel Sanders’ anger, and a lot of it. He uses a lot of passion while imagining how he wants to punish those who have caused his father to lose his right self. I can understand his anger, and I also understand his passion in his hatred, because he loves his father, but hates the drunken version of him.

Sanders lets us in on his religious views some, or at least how he was raised. “Our neighborhood was high on the Bible, and the Bible was hard on drunkards.” (Sanders 737) He lets us know here that he was raised in church, and was exposed to the Bible. “‘Wine and new wine take away the understanding.’ declared the prophet Hosea. We had also seen evidence of that in our father, who could multiply seven-digit numbers in his head when sober, but when drunk could not help us with fourth grade math.” (Sanders 738) I get the impression that Sanders believes this statement from the Bible, and I agree with him in that belief. “Bible and sermons and hymns combined to give us the impression that Moses should have brought down from the mountain another stone tablet, bearing the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not drink.” (Sanders 738) I get the impression from this quote from Sanders’ essay that he cannot stand drunkards, and once again, I find myself and my values re-enforced by the essay.

Sanders goes on to talk about a story from the New Testament. “The scariest and most illuminating Bible story apropos of drunkards was the one about the lunatic and the swine.” (Sanders 738) The story he is referring to is about a demon-possessed man, who is possessed by multiple demons, who could not be bound by any chains, and who hurt himself with stones in the graveyard. When Christ sent the demons away, they asked permission to go into the swine. “But I thought of the redeemed lunatic, who bathed himself and put on clothes and calmly sat at the feet of Jesus, restored—so the Bible said—to ‘his right mind’” (Sanders 738) Sanders takes this Bible story and relates it to his father. While the man was not a drunk, but was demon-possessed, the same concept of being out of ‘his right mind’ applies. He even goes so as to believe that his father was possessed by demons. I can see from his thoughts that his father might be demon-possessed that he clearly thinks that alcohol is evil, and the drunkenness is a grievous evil.

Towards the end of the essay, Sanders lets us know how he feels about social drinking. “I still shy away from nightclubs, from bars, from parties where the solvent is alcohol.” (Sanders 744) I get the impression that he is against drinking for the sake of entertainment, for the sake of fun. He is afraid that he will become like his father, and he does not have any wish to do so. But he isn’t against drinking entirely, which confuses me. “I still do—once a week, perhaps, a glass of wine, a can of beer, nothing stronger, nothing more. I listen for the turning of a key in my brain.” (Sanders 744) Here Sanders admits to drinking, but I get the impression that it is almost as if drinking is compulsory for him, which is why I am confused. I do think part of why he drinks once a week is so that he will not be tempted to go on a binge if he is denied (whether or not he denies himself of it) alcohol. But he is cautious, which leads me to believe he is a very wise and cautious man. He always makes sure he doesn’t hear that key click which opens the door to his second version or self.

Throughout various places in the essay, I am affected emotionally. Sometimes I fell pity, sympathy and sorrow by the pain a young boy feels at the thought that it is his fault his father drinks (“I was flung back into boyhood, acting as though my father would not drink himself to death if only I were perfect” [Sanders 743] ). At other times I feel anger and hatred when Sanders describes how he would love to burn down the store and kill the Gallo brothers. Mainly I feel sorrow for this boy who had to go through life with only half a father.