Personal Growth and Development

When people experience different situations in life, they learn from them and grow as a person. This is effectively exemplified in Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes. During his childhood, McCourt undergoes many experiences that cause him to lose his innocence and that cause him to be more mature when making decisions. Through his memoir, Frank McCourt demonstrates personal growth through the different experiences he faces.
McCourt matures as he gradually loses his innocence through the experiences he goes through, and as a result he becomes more aware of the environment he is in. He grows from a naïve boy who idolizes his father and blindly follows his orders, to a young man who starts to question his father’s authority. After his father drinks away the money for baby Alphie, McCourt realizes “it’s bad enough to drink the dole or the wages but a man that drinks the money for a new baby is gone beyond the beyonds” (186). He realizes his father is not the perfect person that he respects and admires, and that his father’s actions are absolutely unacceptable; McCourt’s understanding of what is right and what is wrong has developed to a degree where he can judge for himself the character of his own father, and the realization that his father is not who he believed to be strips McCourt of his childlike adoration of his father. Additionally, when his mother is sick and his brothers are starving, McCourt goes out on his own to steal food for them. When McCourt sees “crates of beer and lemonade outside and there isn’t a soul on the street[,] in a second [he has] two bottles of lemonade up under [his] jersey and [he] saunter[s] away trying to look innocent” (236). Following the departure of his father, McCourt begins to assume the ro...

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...that he can go to America, where there are more opportunities to provide for his family and escape poverty. Through the experiences he faces, McCourt becomes a forward-thinker who plans ahead and considers the impacts of his decisions; as a result he makes more mature well-thought-out decisions that help him to achieve future goals that will benefit more people.
Throughout his childhood, Frank McCourt undergoes many experiences that shape him as a person and cause him to mature. Through those experiences he loses his innocence and becomes a more mature decision-maker. In life, it is important to expose one’s self to as many different experiences as possible so that there are more opportunities to grow and develop as a person; life becomes far more enjoyable when that happens.

Works Cited

McCourt, Frank. Angela's ashes: a memoir. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.