A Literary Analysis of Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders (Creative Nonfiction II 09-01-12).

Joseph Melanson

Creative Nonfiction II

Prof. Cahan

20 August 2012

A Literary Analysis of Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders as it applies to the

criteria of the Personal Essay.

          The personal essay is a sub-genre of the literary genre of creative nonfiction. Also known as a familiar essay, the personal essay, unlike the memoir which focuses on the past, it is the present that the perspective is told from, examining some contemporary topic which may still find some relevance in past events. Research is often used to inform the topic of the personal essay. The writer of the personal essay uses their own life to examine contemporary society. If the personal essay is successful it elevates the writers life into a common experience shared by many readers. “Under the Influence” by Scott Russell Sanders fits all of the criteria of the personal essay.

         “Under the Influence” is Scott Russell Sanders examination of his youth under the influence of his father’s alcoholism, and how this influence has not only effected Sanders and his family, but also how it is effecting his own children as well. Sanders relates his youth growing up watching alcohol transform his father whom Sanders describes in one part as “playful, competent, and kind when sober” into a character he likens to a man who became “a stranger, as fearful as any graveyard lunatic” when intoxicated (242, 243). His father’s alcoholism created an environment of fear in which Sanders family experienced his father’s drunken behavior which alternated between rage and melancholy. He relates how his father’s alcoholism caused his brother to become rebellious, his sister retreated into herself, while Sanders felt compelled to become “the stalwart and dutiful son who would hold the family together” (248). It was only after Sanders grew up that he discovered the disease of alcoholism, its effects upon the family members of its sufferers, and the prevalence of this debilitating addiction within our society. It is through his present perspective that Sanders can look upon his youth and both understand what he was going through at the time, making sense of the chaos of his youth, and understanding how it effects him even now, causing him to become a workaholic, carrying with him a secret fear that someday the slightest drop of alcohol may cause him to sacrifice himself to the demon of alcoholism from which his father could never escape.

          The personal essay, Perl and Schwartz state, “focus less on the past and more on the present, exploring some aspect of the here-and-now, which can also include connections to the past” (11). Sanders begins his essay describing his father’s compulsive drinking. “He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food – compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling” (Sanders 237). “I use the past tense not because he ever quit drinking but because he quit living” (Sanders 237). “That is how the story ends for my father, age sixty-four, heart bursting, body cooling and forsaken on the linoleum of my brother’s trailer” (Sanders 237). “The story ends for my brother, my sister, my mother, and me, and will continue so long as memory holds” (Sanders 237). Sanders then remarks on how the past continues to haunt his present, “in the perennial present of memory, I slip into the garage or barn to see my father tipping back the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders of whiskey, the cans of beer disguised in paper bags” (237). He relates his and his family’s experience of growing up under the influence of his father’s alcoholism, concluding his essay with the fear of one day of being overtaken by the lure of alcohol. Sanders remarks that he takes a drink, “once a week, perhaps, a glass of wine, a can of beer, nothing stronger, nothing more” (250). “I listen for the turning of a key in my brain” (Sanders 250).

          The writer of personal essays can also “use research near and far” (Perl and Schwartz 218). Sanders used research in finding terms of intoxication illustrated in the following sentence, “consider a few of our synonyms for drunk: tipsy, tight, pickled, soused, and plowed; stoned and stewed, lubricated and inebriated, juiced and sluiced; three sheets to the wind, in your cups, out of your mind, under the table, lit up, tanked up, wiped out; besotted, blotto, bombed, and buzzed; plastered, polluted, putrified; loaded or looped, boozy, woozy, fuddled, or smashed; crocked and shit-faced, corked and pissed, snockered and sloshed” (239). Sanders quotes the biblical prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink” (242). “The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are confused with wine, they err in vision, they stumble in giving judgment” (Sanders 242). “For all the tables are full of vomit, no place is without filthiness” (Sanders 242). Sanders later relates the tale told in the Bible, of Jesus exorcising a madman, and sending the possessing spirits into nearby swine. Sanders later uses this parable to describe his own father’s possession by a different kind of spirits.

          Personal essays”, Perl and Schwartz state, “use life experiences to make larger social statements” (218). When Sanders was growing up there was no common knowledge about the disease of alcoholism, no Alcoholics Anonymous, no rehabilitation centers. The alcoholic, like his family, was unable to turn to anyone for help, had no refuge to escape the demon of alcoholism. “Left alone with our grievous secret, we had no way of understanding Father’s drinking except as an act of will, a deliberate folly or cruelty, a moral weakness, a sin” (Sanders 242). Nowadays we live in a society that has many programs and groups for those suffering from alcoholism, treating it more as a curable disease for the sufferer who truly desires change, rather than a shameful stigma that encouraged those to hide their addiction and keep it a secret. But when Sanders was young there was not this climate of tolerance and understanding towards addiction. Sanders, at the time, was left to wonder “why our father, so playful and competent and kind when sober, would choose to ruin himself and punish his family, we could not fathom” (242).

         When the personal essay is working well it “tells a larger truth about the writer’s experience, one that readers can relate to their own lives” (Perl and Schwartz 11). Sanders relates how his father’s alcoholism, and the chaos it caused, forced him to become the perfect son who was responsible, and always remained in control. “If my father was unstable, I would be a rock. If he squandered money on drink, I would pinch every penny. If he wept when drunk – and only when drunk – I would not let myself weep at all” (Sanders 249). Sanders relates how his son and daughter noticed the sadness which lingered in his father from his youth. His daughter gave him a “placard for the wall: WORKAHOLIC” (Sanders 249). His son tells him when he notices Sanders in the grip of his sadness “he feels responsible” (249). And so Sanders is weighted down, in some way as we all are, by the things we inherit from our families, their addictions, their shames, their dysfunctions, either blindly continuing in their behavior helpless, or in some way overcompensating and trying so hard to prove ourselves to others.  

            From the present Sanders looks back upon his past, on the effect that his father’s alcoholism has had on him, and is now having on his children who know their father carries some sadness from his youth. Sanders informs his essay with research, the various terms for alcoholism, biblical references to drink, and the data about the prevalence of alcoholism in America. Sanders, through his essay, relates a common experience for many children of adult alcoholics, and the effects of alcoholism on the family of its sufferers. Sanders, by sharing his experiences, reminds us that all of us are effected in some way by dysfunctions of our families, and their dysfunctions can unknowingly become our own, and if we are lucky enough to escape our youths intact, many people out there in the world do not.   

Works Cited:

Sanders, Scott Russell. “Under the Influence.” Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Eds. Sondra Perl and Mimi Schwartz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2006. (237-250). Print.