Angela's Ashes: Post 4

As I continue reading Angela’s Ashes, I enjoy watching Frank McCourt grow up. His life in Ireland is still rough and his family remains poor, so it’s comforting to remind myself that he survived his childhood and became a successful writer.

One important event in Frankie’s life that I read about was his First Communion. Frankie comes from an Irish Catholic family, and religion was highly valued in Ireland at the time of his childhood, so adults in his life are constantly reminding him how significant his First Communion is. However, I was struck by the lack of sincerity and genuineness in Frankie’s First Communion. The mechanical attitude toward religion was set by the teachers at Frankie’s Catholic school, who are in charge of teaching the boys how to receive their First Communion. The teachers force the boys to memorize the Ten Commandments and other facts about Catholicism, and threaten to beat them if they don’t remember these facts. The school acts as a factory of sorts for creating Catholics. Frankie describes this phenomenon by saying that the teacher “tells us we’re hopeless, the worst class he ever had for First Communion but as sure as God made little apples he’ll make Catholics of us, he’ll beat the idler out of us and the Sanctifying Grace into us” (118). Faith, God or what it means to be Catholic are never discussed in the preparation for Communion. Students at Frankie’s school respond by mirroring their teachers’ indifference to these aspects of religion. Frankie is mainly excited for First Communion because of a tradition in which kids walk through the streets of their town and collect money from other Catholics as a reward for taking their First Communion. Then, this money is spent on candy and films at the cinema, specifically those with James Cagney in them. Frankie is no exception to this custom. He has been told that First Communion is the “happiest day of his life” (127), and he echoes this sentiment by telling the reader, “First Communion is the happiest day of your life because of The Collection and James Cagney at the Lyric Cinema” (127). Of course, he gets the reason for his supposed happiness wrong, but no one really seems to care.

A recurring concept in this section of Angela’s Ashes is Frankie’s parents’ desire for Frankie to accomplish something. It seems that they want to make something out of him, perhaps to prove that their poverty will not get in the way of Frankie’s achievements in life. In order to do this, Frankie holds a few odd jobs, which include helping his uncle distribute newspapers, delivering a lunch to his grandmother’s tenant, and reading books to an old man. More significantly, Mr. and Mrs. McCourt first sign Frankie up for Irish dancing classes. Frankie, however, hates the dancing, and is afraid that others will think he is a sissy because of it. He describes himself leaving dance classes and “hoping my pals won’t see me with boys who wear kilts and girls with white teeth and fancy dresses from olden times” (142). Frankie is not outgoing by nature, and sometimes works a little harder than other boys to fit into the crowd at his school. Therefore, the embarrassment that dancing brings him, combined with his dislike of it, motivates him to spend the money intended for his dance lesson on candy and going to the cinema. Inevitably, he gets in trouble with his parents when they discover this, and then stops dancing for good.

Another attempt to make Frankie accomplish something comes when his father is determined that Frankie must become an altar boy at their church. Frankie memorizes the Latin that altar boys must repeat during church services, and is bathed and dressed in better-than-average clothes. There is an atmosphere of excitement as he and his father walk down to the church so Frankie can become an altar boy. However, the man at the church rejects Frankie and his father in one quick sentence, saying “We don’t have room for him” (149). This harsh refusal destroys the altar boy dream for the McCourts. Mr. and Mrs. McCourt also become convinced that Frankie couldn’t become an altar boy because of his family’s poverty. Mrs. McCourt spells out this idea quite plainly by saying, “’Tis class distinction. They don’t want boys from lanes on the altar. They don’t want the ones with scabby knees and hair sticking up. Oh, no, they want the nice boys, with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs” (149). This concept is terribly discouraging for Mr. and Mrs. McCourt, and it serves to further persuade them that Frank’s quest for success in his life will be significantly harder because of his social status.

Mr. and Mrs. McCourt themselves continue to struggle because of their poverty. Putting food on the table and buying coal to boil water are hard to do because they have so little money, and the McCourt parents seem to be losing their motivation to do these things. Mr. McCourt has made no progress on fixing his drinking problem. He can’t hold a job for long, because he drinks his way through his salary when he is paid, and misses work the next morning. Additionally, both parents have become somewhat addicted to cigarettes, and spend valuable money on them. However, Frankie discovers that there are people living in poverty that is even worse than his own when he spends a night with a friend from school named Paddy Clohessy. Paddy lives in a part of town called Arthur’s Quay, which is dangerous and has houses that “are old and might fall down at any minute” (163). Paddy’s house is in ruins, his father is very ill, and his siblings don’t get enough to eat for breakfast. In a previous chapter, Frankie had given Paddy a part of his lunch because Paddy looked hungrier than all the other schoolboys, and now Frankie says that he’s “very sorry for the Clohessys and all their troubles…” (169). These situations show that Frankie is a very compassionate person who can be friendly and helpful to those in need. Other boys from school would be more likely to make fun of Paddy, but Frankie makes friends with him instead.

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