Angela's Ashes: Post 1

For my outside reading book, I am reading Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. The book is a memoir about the author’s childhood in the United States and in Ireland. Frank’s parents were Irish immigrants to New York. The beginning section that I read this week took place in New York, although his parents will soon move the family back to Ireland. Frank’s family is poor, and his father has a difficult time holding down a job, because he is an alcoholic. This leaves his mother, Angela, in a very difficult place, because she has five children to feed and no source of income. In a way, Angela has to make an ethical decision each week—should she tell the grocer that she needs to get food now, and will pay him back later, even though she does not know when she will next get money? Or should she be more honest financially but let her many young children go hungry? The tough decision makes Angela hopeless and desperate, and it also makes Frank feel sad for her. This is shown through his reaction when Frank looks “out at Mam at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, drinking tea, and crying. I want to get up and tell her that I’ll be a man soon and I can get a job in the place with the big gate…” (28). Coming from a four year old, this statement is very moving and shows the reader what desperate straits the family was in.
Frank’s father seems to be the polar opposite of his mother in terms of ethics—he comes home many Friday nights drunk, having spent his entire paycheck on alcohol, and he doesn’t act guilty about it when he is drunk or when he is sober. Angela is obviously unhappy with his irresponsible habits, but his children don’t hold it against him. In fact, Frank seems to like his father as much or more than he likes his mother, which just goes to show that good ethics don’t always reap popularity.
Although it would undoubtedly be easy for McCourt to sound bitter or unhappy about his underprivileged childhood as he writes his memoir, his voice doesn’t come across that way at all. On the contrary, he writes about his family’s situation with a dry sense of humor and even a touch of cynicism. This makes the book worlds more interesting than it would be if he wrote with a woeful tone. For instance, when he is giving the reader a preview of life in Ireland, he describes how everyone is constantly wet, because their houses are not leak proof and their clothes never dry. He then goes on to say that churches’ dryness, not their religion, was what motivated Irish people to be so religious: “Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we knew it was only the rain” (12). I really enjoy reading this humorous perspective on what was actually a harsh reality.

McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

*I wanted to underline "Angela's Ashes" but blogger wouldn't let me.