The Agony in Alcohol

The Agony in Alcohol

People celebrate many different holidays and festivals with different types of alcohol because truth is it helps relieve stress. I remember my grandfather used to be a very kind and caring person. He would take my brothers and me to the zoo every time we went to visit him. He would get us ice cream and was even the first person to show me how to drive a car. Everything changed with alcohol. My grandpa was hurt on the job and was forced to retire; the company claimed it was his fault so he got no compensation. With that he took on alcohol. In Mr. Flood's Party, by Edwin Arlington Robinson, old Eben Flood drank alcohol sociably with friends but later in his life it turned into a heavy habit, he uses it to relieve stress, but in the end it inevitably leads to a depressing and lonely life.

In the poem it's obvious that Mr. Flood is lonely and that he has no family or friends, but it was not always like that. In lines 13-16 Old Eben raises his glass to propose a toast to himself, this implies that at one point in his life he drank with family and friends at social gatherings where he made toasts. In line twenty the image of Roland is evoked, the jug held up to Eben's lips is being compared to the horn that Roland blew to signal Charlemagne--all too late--that he needed help. The simile of Roland's ghost is made more effective by the metaphor in the previous lines; instead of armor of iron and steel like that of Roland, old Eben wears an armor of "scarred hopes outworn," in other words, the protective shell of detachment and imperviousness to the buffetings of life that one is able to develop after long years of frustrations, defeats, and losses coming one upon another. With this in mind, after he lost his loved one or fell in defeat he turned to alcohol and lost the rest of his friends, revealed in the last two lines of the poem.

Another place where Mr. Flood uses alcohol was when he wanted to relieve some of the stress he had to deal with. In lines 25-28 he treats his jug as a "sleeping child" fearing that it might break. This special emphasis might hint that he is either very careless or that people have made fun of him in the past. These bullies might have broken some of his personal belongings, or other material things, so he now fears that his precious jug might break. There is only so much a man can