The Sadness of Poverty in Frank McCourt's Angela’s Ashes

The Sadness of Poverty in Frank McCourt's Angela’s Ashes

“It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.”

In the novel Angela's Ashes, (1996) by Frank McCourt, a life of poverty is the only life this family knows. It is a memoir about a young boy born in New York City. Frank, born ten months prior to his brother Malachy, was raised in a small apartment with his parents, Angela and Malachy McCourt.

A dark haired boy with fair skin, little Frankie was forced to wear the same clothes day after day and be happy that he even had anything. The family's breakfast consisted of tea and sometimes bread. Dinner was usually a piece of fried bread dipped in more tea and supper was bread and tea and jam and sometimes mashed potatoes with butter and salt. Born to a father who became an alcoholic at a early age, Frank was used to those long waits on Friday nights, payday. The day when all the other fathers came home and gave the money to their families and then took some for themselves to go out and drink. Malachy McCourt was different, he took all his money, spent it on the drink and came home singing songs from his days in Ireland. He would stumble in the door and get the two young boys up and make them promise to die for Ireland. He would teach them his favorite song and they would all sing until Malachy passed out.

"Up the narrow street he stepped

Smiling and proud and young

About the hemp-rope on his neck

The golden ringlets clung,

There's never a tear in the blue eyes

Both glad and bright are they,

As Roddy McCorley goes ...

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...ey had. The doctors advised his mom to feed him eggs and beef but all she was able to feed him was some beef broth for a couple days.

It takes a very skilled writer to relate his life to the world, especially such a painful one. Angela's Ashes portrays a life of starvation and lack of money. Living every day one at a time and when they so much as received an extra shilling or two, blowing it on the movies or a piece of candy. In those days, it was useless to save up unless you knew you or someone close to you was in definite need of it. When a simple story about a boy growing up in Ireland can make a person cry, that is the best way of touching a reader's heart. A good writer knows exactly how to do that and an even greater writer is brave enough to admit that this sad story. . . is theirs.

Work Cited

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