Angela's Ashes, Slamming the door on the irish catholic childhood
Uploaded by little_man_young on Jun 08, 2006
When I think of Frank McCourt’s memoir Angela’s Ashes, the quote that comes to memory the most is when Angela says to Frank, “You are never to let anybody slam the door in your face again.” This quote is not only powerful, it is analogous to what Angela’s Ashes is, a story about an Irish catholic childhood. The Irish catholic childhood was described by Frank McCourt in the memoir as a “miserable childhood”(). This childhood was full of poverty and heartache, and of course, ashes. This life could be broken down into two main parts, the Irish life, and the catholic life.
The Irish part of this childhood had one main thought that was consistently presented in the memoir. This thought was that the Irish were the best people, and better then anyone else, including the English. There was a certain amount of pride that was instilled by the parents into children, and this quote is an example of this. This quote was said right after a door was slammed in the face of Frank and his mother Angela. If Angela was not trying to give a lesson in pride, she might just walk silently with her son after such a traumatic event. However, since she is Irish, she felt the need to tell Frank that he was never to let anyone slam the door in his face again. There are other numerous examples of this in the memoir but there are two that are recurring in the memoir. The first is the repeated attempt by the father, who is always drunk at the time, to get his sons to stand up and die for Ireland. This shows that firstly, Ireland (and the Irish people), are worth dying for, and it secondly shows that the father is trying to instill that pride into his children. The second reoccurring example of Irish pride in the memoir is the Irish folk songs that are excessively sung. The most common folk song in the memoir is the one about Kevin Barry. The just of the song is that Kevin Barry went to the battlefields to presumably die for Ireland, and while he was doing this, he held his head high.
Part of the pride of being Irish, was being catholic. This was an important part of the Irish...