Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Introduction Blog - Stephen

My name is Stephen. I’m a freshman this year, and I live in Mechanicsburg, Ohio. I’ve lived in Ohio my whole life. I have three sisters and one brother. Like Matt said in my introduction, my favorite band is Thousand Foot Krutch. I enjoy playing guitar, basketball, and backpacking and camping.

“In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which opens famously with Gregor Samsa waking up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into an insect, Gregor’s family keep reassuring themselves that things will be just fine again “when he comes back to us.” Each time aclohol transformed our father we held out the same hope, that he would really and truly come back to us, our authentic father, the tender and playful and competent man, and then all things would be fine. We had grounds for such hope. After his tearful departures and chapfallen returns, he would sometimes go weeks, evenmonths, without drinking. Those were glad times. Every day without the furtive glint of bottles, every meal without a fight, every bedtime without sobs encouraged us to believe that such bliss might go on forever.”

I think Scott Russel Sanders told this story in writing because he couldn’t tell it any other way. He says numerous times in the narrative that he didn’t talk about his father’s addiction to anyone except his wife. They didn’t even talk about it within their family. Sanders felt that writing would be the easiest way to tell his story. He told the story to try to stop the same thing from happening to other families; so that alcoholics could see how they are affecting their families.

What struck me the most about Sanders’ writing was the plaintive tone he used. It was almost as if he was begging the reader to stay away from alcohol. Because he took most of his examples from when he was a child, I could feel his emotions during the story. His dissapointment when his father kept drinking, his hope when his father stopped at various times, it all seemed very real to me. Even though I don’t have the same issues with my father, I can still understand how he feels about his father drinking.

One other thing that stuck out to me is the fact that Sanders’ father would hide his alcohol. Not just because his wife disapproved, but I think because he knew deep down that all the drinking was bad. He tried to hide it, even though his whole family knew. Why would he bother to hide it if he didn’t feel guilty about it?

1 comment:

  1. I competely agree with your statement about why he wrote this essay. It seems like he had no other way to show the world what happened to him other than to write about his life.

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