Alcholic
As Tim and his friend race into Tim’s father’s detached workshop to build a birdhouse for a school project, Tim is hoping that his father is not there drinking his booze and embarrasses him. Luckily, once they get there, his father was no where visible. They get started on the birdhouse. Tim reaches into his father’s toolbox to find nails and a hammer and his little fingers graze over something cold, hard, and smooth. As he looks into the drawer and realizes it is one of his father’s stashed beer bottles, he closes the drawer immediately to not let his family’s secret get out to his unaware friend. Unfortunately, as Tim is trying to come up with an excuse to leave the workshop, his friend decides to have a seat on a cushioned workshop stool. They suddenly heard a crunch sound and the friend gets up immediately. The secret is out as bits of crushed, dark brown glass fall out from underneath the cushion. Tim feels shameful, embarrassed, and appalled. Tim’s childhood experience with the drinking is comparable to Scott Russell Sanders’ upbringing. Scott Russell Sanders grew up in the fifties and sixties in the Midwest, had a sometimes verbally abusive alcoholic father, and experienced feeli
The children and mother are transformed as a result of the father’s or husband’s drinking. The children tip toe past him to not wake him and have him release his fire and are transformed into frightened creatures as they “curl” into the “fearful sheets” (139). They “curl” since their mother and father are not there to hold and comfort them like a mother or father should do for their scared child (139). They are forced to be the adults and care for themselves. Instead of being with her children, their mother is transformed into a detective by searching for evidence and police to maintain some order. She “slings accusations at him” and often “hunted for bottles, counted the cash in his wallet, sniffed his breath” (139, 141). She yells at him and he snarls and growls back like an animal when he awakes from his drunken sleep (139). The children take on another role after being coerced into being guards for their mother. While the father and children took routine trips to Sly’s, their mother asked them keep an eye on their father (141). Sanders’ father’s drinking was a major problem because of who it affected. It caused people to lie to unknowledgeable citizens to cover up a family secret. Alcohol immerses the alcoholic into their own world that they see as brave and manly. They are really cowards and shameful. The children have to take on adult like roles to survive and spy to take care of the alcoholic. The wife has to care for everybody and stretches herself to play three roles: the father, mother, and wife. All in all, Sanders shows that alcoholism is widespread, across the world and throughout “normal” looking families. Sanders uses diction to demonstrate how the drinking was a family secret. Words like “hidden, slips, and stashes” in long, descriptive sentences to allow the reader to interpret what one would feel witnessing these events and to show the secretiveness of alcoholism (
Some topics in this essay:
Russell Sanders,
WW II,
Influence Tim,
Unfortunately Tim,
sanders’ father,
Russell Sanders’,
mother father,
father’s drinking,
children mother transformed,
Scott Russell,
transformed result father’s,
bottle father,
sucking bottle,
fifties sixties,
family secret,
result father’s,
father drinking,
transformed result,
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Approximate Word count = 1318
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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