Angela's Ashes Analysis

he memoir of Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes starts before Frank is born the reader knows he had help of some kind composing the beginning. Frank may have traveled back to Ireland when he began writing or consulted his mother before she passed and before he began to write. McCourt never explicitly says how he gathered his knowledge about before he was born and before he was of the age to remember things in detail. There are many possibilities as to how McCourt formed his memoir, whether it be his imagination, logical knowledge, or word of mouth; with the help of his editors he constructed a great piece of literary work.

It is communal effort from McCourt’s imagination and his other sources to create Angela’s Ashes. The memoir starts before

Frank was conceived, therefore he had help to piece together how these events happen. “With Angela drawn to a hangdog look and Malacky lonely after three months in jail, there was bound to be a knee-trembler” (McCourt 15). There is simply no way that Frank would have had knowledge about before and when he was conceived or remember being told forbid he ever was. McCourt, writing later in life, relied heavily on his memory, so his memory of his childhood is not expected to be great. By McCourt writing his infancy and young childhood in great detail the help of another party is extremely essential to the reader understanding and enjoying writing. ¨he opens the box and shows us the inside where half the chocolates are gone”(McCourt 270). This part of the memoir shows how emotion and memory collaborate in McCourt’s writing. Frank was saddened and in a feeble emotional state when his father disappointed him for the last time, therefore McCourt could easily recall this memory to write about it. When strong emotions are attached to a memory is becomes much easier to recall and a stronger memory. Many memories of his young life are sad in nature which is a strong emotion, so it may be easier for a much a older McCourt to recall on his childhood from a young age. Even with McCourt having a stronger possibility of remembering details of his young life, being so malnourished and living in squalid conditions at a young age, his brain may have not developed normally thus retaining memory normally further supporting that Angela’s Ashes was a great communal effort.
The way that McCourt uses dialogue is a large way that McCourt uses his imagination in his writing “dad says we can't move again” (McCourt 920).

The memoir is rich with dialogue from the characters and young Frankie himself, there is no possible way that McCourt can remember what his father said one time in one of the many mornings of his life. McCourt uses his personal knowledge of his family members to infer what they might say and how they might word it. McCourt incorporates his memories and knowledge to collaborate in his imagination to relay realistic dialogue of his youth. Though when writing any published pieces of literature there are editors and publishers who have a part in writing the memoir, McCourt would need the to see the eclipse of his writing. The editors and publishers might reproach the dialogue that McCourt has created and intertwine ideas to make it more reader appealing or a more readable structure. When Frank’s memories fall short they may come from pure imagination, for example if he remembered a friend's first name but not the last he may just make up a typical Irish last name to give credibility to the writing. Frank’s use of memory in the writing of his early years is very apparent, he remembers that his father Malachy would use the phrase “Och” often. In the first few chapters Malacky senior uses this phrase much more often than the rest of the memoir that Frankie may remember more clearly. Malachy senior leaves the family when Frankie is about 11, so the memories Frankie has of him maybe stronger and easier to write about because there are so few memories of him and memory is attached to

them.
McCourt is quite successful in making a communal effort to bring together his life experiences and imagination to give the reader a mental image of his young life. The memoir is a communal effort to the extent of McCourt and publishing sources. The memoir is constructed by the mind of McCourt and altered by editors and publishers. When reading a passage McCourt could recall well, it’s apparent in the writing, do to the use of detail and emotion. McCourt and his sources pull past knowledge and inferences to fill in the blanks where Frank can not directly recall the experience. This was done expertly by McCourt and his sources to create writing that flows and tells a story of a man's life to some expectation of accuracy. Up to chapter 14 is where the communal effort is most apparent, in these chapters Frankie is not old enough to retain or recall memory well enough to write descriptively about them. Therefore there is a greater presence of communal effort in this section than the rest of the memoir. Communal effort is seen throughout the whole memoir, but is mostly the communal efforts of McCourt himself rather than other people such as editors and publishers.