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An Irish Catholic Memoir

© Audrey McCrone

There are several themes that come across in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes: poverty, religion, stereotypes, mass disease, and the heroic male who is to rise from the destitution of Ireland, as he perceives it. Angela's Ashes is a first-person account, told in present tense (an intensely effective way to draw the reader into the story). McCourt uses no quotations in dialogue and it works quite nicely. One can see why he won the Pulitzer Prize for this work.

The story begins by stating, "My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead..." his life was the kind of hell that most of us do not experience. This statement is a strong one, letting readers know that his life is going to be a struggle the likes of which we have seldom seen before. He continues, in the introduction, by saying what a terrible childhood he had and that it was a wonder he survived at all, having lost three siblings (assumably) to either consumption (tuberculosis) or starvation. It's extremely surprising that his parents stayed together after such devastation as losing three children. More often than not, the loss of a child will have devastating effects on a marriage.

The stereotypical drunk and proud Irishman and a passive but strong mother are are Frankie's parents. His dad, Malachy McCourt, says "Och" a lot, as he stands idly by, doing nothing to improve his family's absolute squalor, thus hunger. He is a proud drunk, as he spends any money he happens across (even so far as his child's casket money) at the pub, starting out swallowing the week's wages and eventually stops working altogether, resorting to drinking up the dole money (which he'd never stoop to getting himself, but sends Angela instead). Malachy wakes his sons up from sound sleep, making them swear to die for Ireland, singing Roddy McCorley or Kevin Barry songs. Finally, he abandons his family altogether for England.

Angela endures planty of things I could never stand for, as it would be easier to walk away from this man, one would think. Regardless, Frankie's mother has to chase down her husband for the money to feed the poor children at first, ultimately being reduced, through Frankie's eyes, to a common beggar, pleading for scraps of food and preparing a pig's head for Christmas. It is a sad life for her, as she averts her gaze to any stationary object, when experiencing a humbling situation, including one dead fireplace full of ashes, while Frankie cleans Laman Griffin's chamber pot and doesn't even get to use the bike, as promised. Does Angela make a stand for the rights of her son? No, she climbs up to the loft that night and has sex with this jerk. Ah well, she was lonely after being abandoned by her pathetic husband, and maybe she does it simply for shelter.