Frank Mccourt’s Use of Irony to Portray Hypocrisy in Angela’s Ashes

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Frank McCourt’s Use of Irony to Portray Hypocrisy in Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is a heart-wrenching tale about the immense struggles he and his family endure throughout his childhood. He opens the story with the following lines: When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years (McCourt 11; ch.1). Laced with multiple humorous endeavors of childish antics to lighten the severity of this gripping story, McCourt’s work captures his audience from cover to cover while also relaying an intense message. Throughout the novel, McCourt creates irony to convey the blatant hypocrisy of his family, of the Irish Catholic church, and of his father’s Irish nationalism. Surprisingly, quite a bit of the hypocrisy McCourt’s irony portrays is within his own family, beginning with two of Frank’s mother, Angela’s cousins, the McNamara sisters (McCourt 15; ch.1). Chapter one in the novel explains how Angela comes to America, meets Malachy, Frank’s father, and soon becomes pregnant with Frank. The sisters know Angela has “no right to be in an interesting condition” and proceed to take action (McCourt 15; ch.1). The women are described as two reputable citizens who know the difference between right and wrong, “when they sailed down the sidewalks of Brooklyn lesser

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