In the song “Tennessee Whiskey” by Chris Stapleton, he describes life before he met his lover and then he figuratively describes the effect this person has on him. He was an alcoholic and this person’s love changed his outlook on the importance of love and alcohol. The intense feeling of how irresistible romantic love can be is illustrated in Chris Stapleton’s song “Tennessee Whiskey” using figurative language such as juxtaposition and hyperbole. The internal conflict of alcohol addiction expressed by “used to spend my nights out in a barroom” is battled by the power of love that is conveyed through “’Cause there’s nothing like your love to get me high”. The conflict is solved for the speaker by his lover’s irresistible love that is compared as a parallel to an alcohol addiction. The speaker is talking to this person that saved him from alcoholism so that this person knows how he appreciates her and how there is no love that compares to theirs. …show more content…
This contrast becomes clear when the speaker compares his addiction to alcohol he once had, to the addiction of this person’s love. Stapleton says, “liquor was the only love I’d known but you rescued me from reachin’ for the bottom” to illuminate this concept. Love is strong enough to replace the addiction of alcohol for the speaker. Another comparative parallel that comes to light is “but when you poured out your heart I didn’t waste it ‘cause there’s nothing like your love to get me high”. The effect of the juxtaposition shows how love is powerful and irresistible enough for sacrifice of another
Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, in their poems “We Real Cool” and “Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict”, are both alike in their idea of dealing with troubled youth. Brooks discusses in her poem “We Real Cool” rebellious pool-playing youth that “sing sin” (Line 5) and “thin gin.” (Line 6) The whole poem centers around disturbed youth. The narrator in Sonia Sanchez’s poem “Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict”, is also a disturbed young woman who is addicted to heroin, and seems to live a rather rebellious lifestyle. In addition, both of these poems use tone via word choice, sentence structure, and meter in order to vividly describe the scenarios in their poems, and to impact their reader. However, both poets use the literary elements mentioned above differently in their poems.
Unable to adjust to the changes involved in the m or to make friends, she seeks to escape, through drinking. Without the artifice of alcohol her inferior life is insufficient” (430). Emphasizes the fact that the story is about a woman who is socially unable to adjust to living in the city away from country life and how she is coping with her social problems by using alcohol as a mechanism. Therefore, how she has an internal conflict with herself. As well as how she is unable to cope with a large change in the way of life causing her to lose her strings and spiral down a path of alcohol addiction as a mean of passing time by and distracting herself.
One in every twelve adults suffer from alcoholism in the United States, and it is the most commonly used addictive substance in the world. The World Health Organization has defined alcoholism as “an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency.” Reiterated themes encompassing Jeannette Walls’ father’s addiction to alcohol are found in her novel, The Glass Castle: a memoir, which displays instances of financial instability and abuse that hurt the Walls children for the rest of their lives. The Walls’, altogether, are emotionally, physically, and mentally affected by Rex’s alcoholism, which leads to consequences on the Walls children.
Raymond Carver's short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” leaves the reader feeling as if they have sat down at the table with a bottle of Gin and experienced first hand the effects of alcoholism and depression. In the original version of this story the “Beginners” Carver carefully crafts the many sides of an alcoholic personality developing strong knowable characters. The fundamental personalities are left fairly intact from the original version. It should be noted that the feelings that the reader are left with are due at least partially to the severe editing of the “Beginners” done by his editor and friend Gordon Lish. With this collaboration Carvers personal struggles still shine through but his intent of hope and recover from alcoholism were left mostly on the chopping block. Through many interviews and articles Raymond Carver make clear his personal struggles with alcoholism and how it has had an effect on his writing. INTERVIEWER: Where do your stories come from, then? I'm especially asking about the stories that have something to do with drinking. Carver: “At the very least it's referential. Stories long or short don't just come out of thin air.” (The Paris Review) The inner dialog and downward spiral of an alcoholic is experienced through the interaction between these personalities while discussing the topic of love. JA: I noticed recently you're using cliches in your characterizations, and I wonder if you're just observing, or recording the way a mind works. RC: It's there for a purpose; it's working for me, I think, not against me. Or at least I hope and assume this is the case!
It is a fact of life that Alcoholism will distort the victim’s view of reality. With authors, they put parts of their personality and symptoms of their condition into their characters sometimes, flawed distortions included, with varying degrees
Drinking: A Love Story (1996) is a memoir by Caroline Knapp where she shares her experience of gradually becoming an alcoholic. She found drinking to be the most important relationship in her life; she loved how it made her feel, how it coped with her fears and worries. She chronicles some of the effort and self-realization required for recovery from this addiction, but her primary focus is on the charm, seductiveness, and destructiveness that she was able to find in two decades as an alcoholic, hopelessly in love with liquor. Her relationship with alcohol started in early teenage years and progressed through young adulthood, until she finally checked herself into a rehabilitation center at the age of thirty-four.
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction. He still buys him an alcoholic drink at the end of the story because, he has accepted his brother for who he really is.
The story is told by Jessica, a 32-year-old woman married to an alcoholic. She describes throughout the first chapter than she cannot function in life anymore and that she suffers from depression due to codependency. She states that when she is awoken and not taking naps which she describes is a necessity, she often is uncontrollable with her feelings and is always blaming her alcoholic husband for everything. She declares that she switches from different emotional factors including anger to fear while describing how her mood changes throughout her day. The chapter goes on to describe that the husband becomes sober but indeed Jessica was affected by the husband’s drunkenness and made the situation her problem. Beattie describes that Jessica was not insane but that she was codependent. Chapter 2 describes a man named Gerald who was married into an unhealthy relationship for thirteen years until him and his ex-wife divorced. Gerald was a successful man but was not victorious at relationships. After his divorce, Gerald moved on to a similar woman like his first relationship, a daily alcoholic. Gerald’s life was consumed around alcoholics in the attempt to save them. Gerald admitted to being codependent. Beattie uses different stories from different types of people in chapter 2 to describe the complexity of codependency. Beattie uses the next chapter to describe the definition of codependency while giving a
Alcoholism is a severe disease that has the potential to negatively impact not only the individual combating addiction, but also the family members involved with the addict (Park & Schepp, 2014). The documentary series A&E Intervention follows the daily lives of individuals combating addictions such as alcoholism and substance abuse. Throughout Gloria’s A&E episode, before her intervention there was rarely a moment that did not consist of her having an alcoholic beverage within arm’s reach. Gloria was in denial about her alcohol abuse, and seemed to be unattached to traumatic events that occurred in her life, including the death of her father, her stillborn childbirth, and both of her daughter’s complex relationships with her. This paper seeks
Within the memoir, The Glass Castle, the self destructing addiction of alcohol becomes an apparent theme throughout the literature. Alcoholism is a disease that can cause destruction to families and even ruin lives. This is a common occurrence that effect’s many Americans today. Alcoholism is one of the most common problems in families, it doesn’t always interfere with just the person drinking the alcohol. It also affects the people around the influenced person. Rex’s struggle with alcohol is logged through his daughter Jeannettes struggles as she is finding the balance between respecting daughter and a strong individual. It is through her accounts that the reader is able to see the truly damaging effects of this disease.
Furthermore, alcoholism, which is looked at critically by Joyce, is still a large social problem today. Ultimately, Joyce challenges the reader not to settle for the ordinary life. In conclusion, one of the great short stories of the 20th century is James Joyce’s “Eveline.” The story breaks away from traditional thinking by making the case for hazard or taking chances over order and the routine of everyday life. Like his other stories in “Dubliners” Joyce uses “Eveline” as an avenue to share his frustrations with early 20th century Dublin.
Alcoholism has a harsh effect on not only the victim itself, but the family as well. The presence of an alcoholic in a family can alter the environment and cause social, cultural, and behavioral issues within the family members. Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, illustrates how the characters in the play adapt and cope with the departure of their alcoholic father. The topics of alcoholism and the effects of abandonment within the play is discussed in “Tennessee Williams’ Dramatic Charade: Secrets and Lies in The Glass Menagerie”. In the article, Gilbert Debusscher identifies the behavior of the family in relation to Mr. Wingfield’s alcoholism. In his article, Debusscher argues that
A central theme in James Joyce’s works is that of love: what is it, and how can we discuss it? Joyce could not bring himself to use the word ‘love;’ when Nora asked him if he loved her he could only say that he "was very fond of her, desired her, admired and honored her, and wished to secure her happiness in every way; and if these elements were what is called love then perhaps his affection for her was a kind of love" (Ellmann 6). One can read Molly Bloom’s "Oh, rocks. Tell us in plain words" as Nora’s answer to Joyce’s intellectual, complicated answer (Joyce, Ulysses 64). Perhaps as a result of Joyce’s own concern and questions about love, many of his characters are also confused and looking for a definition of love. There are many kinds of love discussed in Joyce’s works, including love for ideals, family, friends, God, and most importantly, husband and wife. This paper will explore the theme of love in Joyce’s work and show that love is a basic concept in life; characters unsure of this concept need to find a concrete definition before they can be comfortable. To do this I will analyze characters from Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses, using the Greek ideals of agape; spiritual love, storge; familial love, philia; the love between friends, and eros; sexual love.
She defines her idea of what is right in a relationship by describing how hard and painful it is for her to stray from that ideal in this instance. As the poem evolves, one can begin to see the author having a conflict with values, while simultaneously expressing which values are hers and which are unnatural to her. She accomplishes this accounting of values by personalizing her position in a somewhat unsettling way throughout the poem.
The argument that is presented throughout this poem, like many other poems, is one that involves love. The narrator is an older man who has found love with a much younger mistress. Because of his old age, he tries to act on his love quickly. The narrator makes an attempt to encourage his lover to act on their love, and give up her virginity.