During Reading
As you read be sure to visit the blog on occasion to leave comments with your thoughts. You must comment five times while you read, and in those comments you must respond to a quotation of your choice from the book. I’ll leave my own quotation comment for you as an example.
As you’re writing your own comments, be sure to read other students’ comments as well. You’ll need to respond to two of your peers comments as well. Again, check out the comments I’ve left for an example.
When you finish the book
Once you’ve finished the entire book, leave two comments where you respond to two of the following writing prompts (from readinggroupguides.com):
1. McCourt writes: “I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.” Was this your impression of Frank McCourt’s father? How can Frank write about his father without bitterness? What part did Malachy play in creating the person that Frank eventually became?
2. Women — in particular mothers — play a significant role in Angela’s Ashes. Recall the scenes between Angela and her children; the MacNamara sisters (Delia and Philomena) and Malachy; Aunt Aggie and young Frank; Angela and her own mother. In what ways do these interactions reflect the roles of women within their families? Discuss the ways in which Angela struggles to keep her family together in the most desperate of circumstances.
3. McCourt titles his memoir Angela’s Ashes, after his mother. What significance does the phrase “Angela’s Ashes” acquire by the end of the book?
4. Despite the McCourts’ horrid poverty, mind-numbing starvation, and devastating losses, Angela’s Ashes is not a tragic memoir. In fact, it is uplifting, triumphant even. How does McCourt accomplish this?
5. Irish songs and lyrics are prominently featured in Angela’s Ashes. How do these lyrics contribute to the unique voice of this memoir? How does music affect Frank’s experiences? How do you think it continues to influence his memories of his childhood?
4 Comments
June 12, 2008 at 3:29 pm
There are obviously many moments in this book that sing out with sadness and melancholy, from the ongoing number of dead children to the fallout of the nuclear family in the wake of the father’s alcoholism. One of the moments that touched me most, however, was when Frank stays with the Clohessys to avoid getting in trouble at home (pgs 164-169). It might not seem like the most tragic scene in the book, but it got under my skin a little when Frankie’s “mam” finally locates him at the Clohessys’ run down home only to find that Mr. Clohessy is an old acquaintance of hers. The tragedy of the moment is in their interaction –he is dying of consumption (what we call tuberculosis today), and she is trapped in a miserable marriage, but as teenagers they danced together at parties and dance halls. They may have even flirted a bit and been in love, they certainly knew fun times together, but none of that matters in the present. I don’t know if many of you can relate to this just yet, but there will come a time when you reconnect with people you knew earlier in life, and that meeting will fill you with nostalgia. It might also fill you with a sense of what might have been had things worked out differently — but, of course, it’s not likely that you can go back and change things to explore that previously possible path, the moment is gone. Whether you’ve experienced this or not, the heaviness of the feeling is felt in the moment where Mrs. McCourt walks home crying, not for worrying about her son, but for having her past surprise her when she wasn’t expecting it. And it touched me. I found my eyes tearing up on the subway a little…
June 14, 2008 at 6:07 pm
While I see sgweber’s point in the comment above, I have to respectfully disagree. The moment where Mrs. McCourt talks with Mr. Clohessy IS touching and a little melancholy, but what about the fact that her husband is such a low-life? I mean, don’t you want to just beat the guy with a blunt object? What little money the family has, he spends on alcohol. Due to the time and place where the story is set, he’s the only one who can really work — she has to stay home with the children — so the family is COMPLETELY dependent upon him and he lets them down again and again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN… How do other people feel about this? Maybe it just makes me so angry because I come from a family that has a history of alcoholism. My own father had the courage to face his problem and fix it when I was about 7 years old — and he’s still sober to this day! (Congrats, Dad!!) — but for awhile it was really difficult for us. So I find myself hating Mr. McCourt, perhaps more than I should, really, but his actions remind me of my own childhood and how frightening things could be. I don’t have much sympathy for men who don’t do right by their families. I think it’s interesting that Frank McCourt is very kind to his father in his memoir…he paints the picture of what their life was like and he doesn’t leave out a single night of wondering where dad might be, but he never seems to judge him poorly. I think I would have if I were writing the story. I wonder if he did it on purpose, if maybe he had so much anger towards his dad over the years that when he sat down to write the book he decided to go easy on him as an act of forgiveness. His dad is only human, after all. We’re none of us perfect, that’s for sure….but I see nothing wrong with trying a little harder to do what’s right.
August 12, 2008 at 7:40 pm
“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all” (11). I believe this is a very interesting way to begin a book because it makes you think about what the rest of the book may hold. It also gets you excited to continue reading the book.
August 12, 2008 at 7:48 pm
“My mom screams again, Dead, Mrs. Leibowitz. Dead.” (37). This is a very sad moment in this book. I can’t even seem to imagine just how this mother and father felt losing their daughter like this. I can already predict that the dad will result back to drinking. He really did seem to love his daughter.
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