TOW # 16 "Angela's Ashes" (IRB)

Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt, is a heartbreaking story about a Frank’s awful childhood, and successful future.  From poverty in Ireland to eventual success in the states, Frank takes his readers back to his dark days emotionally, mentally, and physically. Through the use of childlike tone and guilt motifs, McCourt is able to share how his view on the world changed as he matured.

Frank’s childlike tone is a key part of his purpose. The way he writes allows for some comic relief in passages with somber messages and images. At the very beginning of this book Frank says, “I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would pay money for a head like that” (McCourt 10). Frank, as a child, does not understand the fact that the IRA had a bounty on his father’s head for crimes he committed, and wanted dead. Instead he sticks to the literal translation that they want his head for some sort of decoration. This type of tone is due to Frank’s disconnect from what’s actually happening. Also, Frank’s passages about his friend Mickey show this tone as well. Frank explains how he is jealous of Mickey because every time someone in his family dies he gets a week off from school. He then mentions how he and Mickey both pray Mickey’s sister will die later so that Frank can go to the wake, miss school and eat lots of sweets. This childlike tone symbolizes and foreshadows how Frank’s view of the world changed as he got older, because as a kid he can see the light at the end of the tunnel in every situation, just as he began to see hope for himself in America as he matured.

Guilt is a prominent motif in Angela’s Ashes. The guilt Frank has about the sins he has committed represent how his views of the world, especially his religion, have changed as he has matured. “She must know about Theresa Carmody and the green sofa, how I got her into a state of sin and sent her to hell ,…, I never went to confession after Theresa, that I am doomed to hell myself” (McCourt 428). Religion played a key role in Frank’s childhood, and throughout the book he eventually goes to confession to be forgiven for them. The guilt he feels about his sins are a “side effect” of the greater realizations he is obtaining about how he wants to be a Catholic, but more importantly how he wants to be as a person. He matured, his views matured, and he changed in some ways for the better and some ways for the worse.

Frank McCourt, in Angela’s Ashes, achieves his purpose of beautifully capturing the way the tragedies one faces can impact the way one views the world throughout their life. I would definitely recommend this book to others.