The Northern Irish Conflict and Angela's Ashes

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Frank McCourt was born in New York, during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Malachy McCourt, his father, was from Northern Ireland while his mother, Angela Sheehan, was from Southern Ireland known as the Republic of Ireland. The conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland dates all the way back to the 17th century when Ireland wasn’t divided. English Protestants colonized primarily in the north after England took control of the country. A majority of Ireland were devout Catholics and did not want to be ruled by Protestant Englishmen. In southern Ireland the Catholics fought for their freedom for eight hundred years while the Irish Protestants in the north feared a country ruled by Catholics. After many years of warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants, the southern counties of Ireland became an independent republic while the north remained under British control (Imbornoni).

Malachy McCourt was a Catholic from the North and fought for the South during the war, but southern Irishmen still rejected him for the simple fact that he was from the North. Malachy and Angela separately moved to America after the Civil War and met in New York. Angela, pregnant with a man from the North was frowned upon by her family, but she continued with the marriage and shortly after Francis McCourt, or Frank, was born. McCourt describes, “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood” (McCourt 11). Angela’s Ashes is a memoir of McCourt’s impoverished life and challenges he faced. Frank McCourt uses hunger as a sign of physical need and psychological want for food to portray the sufferings of a Catholic Irishman.

While living in...

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...g and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years” (McCourt 11). He faced many challenges in his life, and hunger was the driving force of all of them. As an author he demonstrates this through the stories of his life to show the hardships of growing up in Ireland when they were all poor and starving.

Bibliography

Imbornoni, Ann M., Borgna Brunner, and Beth Rowen. "The Northern Irish Conflict: A

Chronology." Infoplease. Infoplease, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.

McCourt, Frank. Angela's Ashes: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 1996. Print.

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