Angela's Ashes Essay

Angela's Ashes Essay

Angela’s Ashes
Angela’s Ashes, written by Frank McCourt, is a memoir about Frank’s childhood and all of the rough times he and his family had to face while living in poverty. In the book, Frank tells in depth stories about life in Brooklyn, New York and life after he and his family move back to Limerick, Ireland. He explains his father’s inability to hold down a job and the rough times his family faced living in poverty. He also talked in depth about how his father, who was an alcoholic. He explains that when his father would finally find a job or come into some money, he would go out and spend his earnings on alcohol.
The living conditions for Frank and his family were meager at best in both Limerick and New York. They were living in neglected neighborhoods in old, rundown houses that flooded in three out of the four seasons. It also was not the cleanest either, with diseases traveling throughout the streets in which Frank and his family walked every day. Illness and death are commonplace in Limerick. Frank’s relationship with his father was more of a love-hate relationship. He valued the type of man his dad was when he would tell him stories in the morning and go out looking for a job all day long. Frank wasn’t fond of his father, however, when he would come home from school and realize that his dad was out spending whatever money they had at the pub getting belligerently drunk. When talking of his mixed feelings for Malachy, he says, “I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.” The McCourt family had to resort to begging in order to have something to eat since Malachy would often spend all of the food money on alcohol.
Frank passes out from having Typhoid...

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