Angela’s Ashes Post #1: Chapters 1-3

The first three chapters of Frank McCourt’s book, Angela’s Ashes, describe Frank’s early childhood in New York and his beginning years in Limerick, Ireland. Francis McCourt is born and baptized in Brooklyn, New York, along with three younger brothers: Malachy, and the twins, Eugene and Oliver. When Margaret, their youngest sister, dies, the McCourts move back to Ireland. Angela, Frank’s mother, falls into depression after her only daughter dies. More troubles plague the McCourts when they move back to Ireland; Angela has a miscarriage, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, die, and Malachy (Frank’s father) continues to drink away the dole money.
     The purpose of Angela’s Ashes is to convey poverty and hardships of life in Ireland. A combination of the famine, lack of jobs, and religious conflicts, and the author explains Ireland as a country stuck with nowhere to go. A mature audience is needed to appreciate Frank McCourt's stark picture of poverty and family relationships. The memoir's context is the suffering going on for the impoverished in Ireland in the 1930s, these trials including losing three siblings, getting typhoid fever, and gnawing hunger.
     There are certainly many anecdotes in this memoir, and McCourt goes off on many tangents in the beginning to explain his parents’ background. Pathos is also used in Angela’s Ashes, but not in the conventional sense. McCourt remains oddly detached from his childhood and writes with such a matter-of-fact tone making him not whiny, but the tragic events happening to him makes the reader feel sympathy for him all the same.
     Angela’s Ashes has also won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the ABBY Award and the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, thus making the book quite credible.