The Inheritance Of Tools Analysis

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Core values differ in every individual based on people’s intrinsic morals and beliefs more than any universal principle. Some hold religion above education or love above logic or truth above all else, all depending on the ideologies an individual holds close. However, these values change and reconfigure with every defining experience and crucial revelation that allow individuals to re-evaluate their consciences. Authors George Orwell and Scott Russell Sanders are no stranger to this concept in their essays “Shooting An Elephant” and “The Inheritance of Tools” respectively, but rather both authors embrace the idea of certain revelations being impactful enough to alter essential values. Orwell manifests such a realization as he recounts an epiphany…show more content…
Throughout the essay Sanders recalls countless memories associated with the tools that have been passed down among generations in his family. With each memory an underlying attribute about the previous owner comes forward, such as when Sanders explains how the tools remind him of his father and grandfather’s strength: “The grain in the hickory is crooked and knotty, and therefore tough, hard to split, like the grain in the two men who owned this hammer before me” (332). The analogy of the tough wood to the tough men in his family connects the attributes a good father must have to the qualities the sturdy and reliable tools possessed. In doing so, the analogy also furthers the understanding Sanders has of why his father used the tools to teach Sanders about the attributes of a good man and how the same qualities he admired in the tools as a child came to life in generations of Sanders men as well. After making this comparison, Sanders comes to the epiphany that he wants to have the same solid fatherly role in his children's’ lives that his own father did. Sanders regards these tools as ones he can also use in the process of raising his children, and he realizes his children should grow to be the same respectable adults that past…show more content…
In the process of recounting his childhood experiences with his father, Sanders diverts multiple times in the form of qualifiers to clarify further on points in his story. He does this once when he recalls cutting into wood with his father during a repair: “As the saw bit down the wood released its smell, each kind with its own fragrance, oak or cherry or walnut or pine – usually pine, because it was the softest and easiest for a child to work” (334). Sanders uses this qualifier to expand upon the presence of wood as not just another necessity to the craft but rather as a component chosen carefully by his father to ensure the safest possible results. Though the use of pine due to its compatibility with children is a seemingly insignificant qualifier to include, it speaks to all the small things Sanders saw in his father that eventually amounted to a larger admiration of him as a parent. In noting the care his father put into ensuring his well-being during their projects, Sanders reaches an epiphany that leads to a moral shift in the form of wanting to possess this same loving attentiveness for his own kids. Therefore, the use of qualifiers in Sanders’ essay supports the concept that external influences foster epiphanies

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