Angela's Ashes Sparknotes

Examining the Controversy Surrounding Frank McCourt’s Memoir, Angela’s Ashes
Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes (1996), has been popularly received by readers and critics alike due to its raw, disturbing portrayals of Frank’s life growing up in Limerick, Ireland. The memoir was even turned into a film, which was again fairly well received. However, though some might argue that the stories contained within McCourt’s memoir are brutally honest and open, accurately depicting the life of a poor Irish family struggling to survive through various hardships, others – specifically the people of Limerick – have found the memoir to be offensive and inaccurate, casting the city in a negative light simply to elicit popularity among readers. This essay

He states “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 alcoholic 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 n.pag.). Even with this description unpleasantly summarizing McCourt’s experiences, the reader is still shocked to experience the horrid details of these events. McCourt explains how his family must compete for charity vouchers, shares a disgusting bathroom with other families, and suffers financially due to his father’s alcoholism. To make matters worse, even after his father leaves for England, the family’s situation does not improve; they are evicted and his mother moves the family in with a cousin named Laman, who beats the children, and with whom she has a disturbing relationship that is indicated to be sexual, as McCourt says that “there are nights when we hear them grunting, moaning. I think they’re at the excitement up there” (McCourt n.pag). McCourt is finally able to leave Limerick at the age of 19, and establishes a new life in America, which is where he wrote his successful memoir, becoming far more wealthy than he surely ever thought

It is difficult to determine the validity of such accusations merely from reading articles. To gain a full understanding of the situation, it would be necessary to visit the city and speak to citizens, as well as anyone living who might have known McCourt or those McCourt described in his memoir. On the one hand, McCourt’s descriptions are certainly graphic and dark on a level which seems almost too horrible to be true; on the other, it is obvious even from observing the news on television that horrible things happen frequently in the world, and to say that McCourt’s account must be false, simply because it is disturbing, would be to speak out of privilege-inspired