"Under the Influence"

The green bottles in Under the Influence are very predominant throughout the essay. Sanders writes of these green bottles like they are more than just alcohol, but more like the demons that take his father away from him and his family. It is often mentioned how they are hidden in tool box drawers, crushed beneath hay in a barn, hurled into the woods and denied when found. He is just a little boy trying to protect and salvage as much of his family as possible. Not only does he write about the green bottles, but there is also another incident involving a bottle. His father threatens to "shut his mother up" by holding a milk bottle up above her face while he has her head yanked back by her hair. Sanders also uses the bible story of the lunatic and the swine, among others, to show his hatred for alcohol and confusion towards its appeal. Even on his 21st birthday, as well as throughout his adult life, he's very hesitant to even sip anything alcoholic. He see's how it affected him, his brother, his sister, and his mother and feels that it's his job as a parent to keep any thing of such nature as far away from his children as possible. He'd rather have his daughter label him a workaholic than an alcoholic. He fears the person he could become because of his father and his abuse of alcohol. Even though his father could go days, weeks, months, or years without a drop, Sanders and his family would still fear the day he would pick up those green bottles, beer cans, or wine and let the awful "dragon" back in that would control and change his father from a Dr. Jekyll to a Mr. Hyde. They all lived in fear, not only for his health, but fear of him leaving and really never coming back, fear of his harsh words and fear of the prospect of being hit. They were all so fearful and silent. The children felt the need to tiptoe around their sleeping father, or the dragon as he was labled in the essay, and they would lay still and quiet in their beds at night fearful of even moving an inch. His mother knew what was going on and did beg him to stop, but because of the angry nature of the beast and the disease as a whole, she never could quite get him to stop completely. It wasn't until doctors warned of how near to death he was that he put the bottle down, only to pick it back up 15 years later. Sanders never wanted to be like his father and that fear reflected upon his choices as an adult. He avoided bars, clubs, and parties where he knew alcohol would be served. He compared compared all the other neighborhood families and their own drunken fathers and husbands. He saw what they were capable of and feared it for his own family. He hated the gas station his father frequented for his booze. He even hated the picture of the brothers pictured on the label of the green bottles. He even wrote about how he would kill them if given the chance. His imagination went to great lengths when it came to thinking of ways to stop his father from having any sip of liquor. His 10 year old thoughts raced trying to come up with a way to change him completely. He wanted so badly to protect him of the nightmare he had become. He often wondered throughout his childhood if maybe he had been the perfect student or the perfect athlete that maybe the outcome would have been different, that maybe it was actually his fault. In all reality, it wasn't his fault or his familys, it was the fault of his father for making the decsions and poor judgements in his own life.