Temperance Movement - T.S. Arthur and Edgar Allen Poe

This relates to people because he is a successful, hard worker; then the narrative shifts into a story involving drinking. The narrator provides us with details about becoming "wild, restless and irritable "(Arthur 33). His wife questions him about his habits of never drawing a sober breath, and he responds by yelling, "I won't submit to be catechized by you!" "(Arthur). The narrator transforms into a violent man, which leads him to his downfall. Furthermore, he screams at his baby and he "caught her up madly by one arm, and commenced beating her with all my strength "(Arthur 36). Therefore, the mother tries snatching the baby out of his hands, but he responds "with a powerful blow on the side of his wife's head, and she fell senseless to the floor, and at the same moment, I kicked my child half across the room" "(Arthur 36). Arthur shows how alcohol can cause a person to become so irresponsible as to hit his wife and child. .
             The narrator in Arthur's narrative undergoes transformations that led him to harm his family, but he experiences another transformation by becoming sober. His movement into sobriety was because of a kind and concerned word from a Washingtonian who awoke him from the ground to say, "I shall fill a drunkards grave. Hundreds of men, who have been in the constant habit of drinking, have renounced liquor altogether, and are now banded together for mutual assistance. Come! Will you not join in with them?"" (Arthur 49). All in all, this stranger connects with the narrator because he too was "enslaved to the love of the strong drink "how he neglected his business and abused his family"" (Arthur 49). Subsequently, the narrator does become responsible by accepting his blame and signs the Washingtonian pledge. He now lives with his children again and does his job as a reformer by waking up early every morning to "look out for the drunkards on the cellar-doors"" (Arthur).