Rising Up From the Ashes of "Angela’s Ashes" by Frank McCourt

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“People 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 years.” (McCourt 11) Most people today take life for granted. That is, they live way beyond their means, live off of their credit cards, and when a bill comes say “everything will be fine” or “my parents will take care of it.” Modern society is like a plastic bubble with countless people living within it, assuming that they will be protected from the terrors of the outside world.

This was not so for the McCourt family. The book Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s memoir about his family’s downtrodden life in America first and then Ireland. During the 19-year span of the book, the McCourts lose three children to disease, battle poverty, alcoholism, and depression: McCourt’s sister Margaret dies at their home in Brooklyn of a mysterious illness. His mother, Angela, for whom the book is named, is unable to eat or sleep after Margaret’s death and McCourt’s father turns to alcohol to curb his feelings. To escape the horrific situation, the family heads back to Angela’s native Limerick to start a new life. Sadly, all that the move brings is a more difficult battle with reality.

“I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said, ‘Sickness son, and things that don’t fit.’” (McCourt 94) Sickness. Sickness: both in the form of disease, as well as in the form of alcoholism, are the definite antagonists within Angela’s Ashes. Both disease and alcoholism run so rampant in the poorer areas of Ireland, such as Limerick where Mc...

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...t behind so long ago, with hope that his mother and brothers will escape the prison that is Limerick and join him in time. It is amazing what one dream can do to bring about such widespread happiness to all who dream it.

Modern society may seem like a plastic bubble of protection for people today, but Frank McCourt knows that it never was and never will be. Angela’s Ashes is the story of how he came to realize this at a very young age. Yet is also a story of tribute to his brothers, but in particular to his mother. Even with the reality of all the death and destruction surrounding her family, she fought hard to help her children to the other side, even if it meant sacrificing for her and sending them out to work. Arriving in America, McCourt sees that in America he will have to sacrifice many things to get what he wants, but at least he is ready for the challenge.

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