The Memoir of a Miserable Irish Catholic

554 Words3 Pages
Angela's Ashes is a memoir about Frank McCourt, an Irish Catholic. This memoir describes Frank's struggle against poverty and starvation during his childhood and youth. Despite these factors, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt is not tragic but inspirational, though the challenges and people Frank encounters throughout the memoir. The people Frank meet help shape him and the memoir. Mr.O'Halloran tells Frank “You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind” (208) this opens a door of possibility to Frank because he's always being told what to do and never thought of what he can do or think. Malachy, Frank's father who is an alcoholic, influence's Frank in many ways. At one point in the book, Frank's father drinks the money for the new baby, when Frank find's him he exclaims “ I don't know what to do because I know I'm raging inside...all I can think of doing is running in and giving him a good kick in the leg...I might as well go home and tell my mother a lie that I never saw him couldn't find him” (185). By doing this Frank appears more mature than he is, this also shows how much Frank loves his father but cannot get mad at his father despite all the bad choices he has made. Despite Frank's old teachers that bully him and his alcoholic father, Frank doesn’t think of hate or bully other people because of it. Frank's battle against poverty may be seen as one of the most tragic events of this memoir, that may be so, but it's also one of the most important. When Mrs.Meagher goes down to the Dispensary, Frank's mam says, “that's the worst thing that could happen to any family”(224) Frank learns from this that there's always someone worse off than you. Even when things got awful for Frank, he learns to take the good with the bad. He admits that “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while” (11).
Open Document