Under the Influence-Blog 4

This memoir was written by Scott Russel Sanders. It is his account on the memories he has of his drunken father. He talks about how he used to see his father “tipping back the flat green bottles of wine, the brown cylinders of whiskey, and the cans of beer”. He describes his witnesses of his parents fighting when his dad was drunk. The way he would go around the house “thumping furniture, rummaging in the kitchen, slamming doors”. Scott says how he blamed himself because he thought the reason his dad was drunk as because he failed him somehow. The way he thought could relieve his father from his drunkenness and cure the ache which was the reason his father says he drinks was by “doing all my chores, earning A’s in school, winning baseball games, fixing the broken washer”. At the end of the memoir, Scott tells the readers that he is now forty four and that he knows now his father was an alcoholic and was consumed by a disease, not by disappointment. I personally could not relate to Scott. He must have gone through a very hard time and none of my parents or family members are very big on alcohol. I am definitely truly blessed and give all my support to Scott and definitely marvel at the fact that he became very successful even with a hard history as his. Diction is everywhere in this memoir. I liked when he described his father drinking “as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breach, as a starving dog gobbled food”. Some direct speech also takes place in this memoir between Scott and his father where it seems like the conversation is forced, and pretty random. There are words Scott uses to contribute to the portrait of the father like grunt, growls, rummaging, slamming, thumping, prowls, muttering describing his dads fight with his mom and his fathers’ journey around the house when left alone. Very animal like.