Angela's Ashes

The Endurance of Family

Family is perhaps the central theme of Angela’s Ashes, for despite its limitations, Frank loves his family and is loyal to his
parents and brothers no matter how far from them he travels. He is especially aware of his mother’s strong influence
throughout his childhood, and her fortitude as a human being as well as his parent. She overcomes the challenges of her
husband’s alcoholism and the resulting poverty and illness without becoming bitter or angry. Frank repays her with both his
filial devotion and by following her advice to make something of himself.

Stories as Inspiration
Stories, whether about legendary Irish heroes spoken or sung of in verse, are an important part of Frank’s life. As a young
child he is obsessed with Cuchulain, and later he finds comfort and joy in reading Gulliver’s Travels aloud to Mr. Timoney.
Patricia Mulligan gives him the gift of poetry before dying in the hospital, and it is the Highwayman poem that in large part
enables his recovery from typhoid. The familiar tales bring Frank peace and perspective as he identifies with the
protagonists who defeat all odds in finding their way in an unfair world.

Destructiveness of Alcohol
Alcohol is another recurring theme, for both the escape it offers from the harsh realities of the poor, and for over indulgence
in it leading down a treacherous path. Frank’s father Malachy is a hopeless alcoholic who cannot seem to learn his limits
even if it means starving his family and being responsible albeit indirectly for the deaths of three of his own children. Whi le
other characters are also drawn to drink, Frank’s uncles and most neighbors are spared the final indignity of having spent
the entire week’s wages on Friday and being unable to keep the job more than three weeks for missing the Saturday
morning shift as a result.

Persistence of Poverty and Hunger

Poverty is a haunting motif in the book, for while there are contributing factors such as Malachy McCourt’s alcoholism, it is
poverty itself that prevents the family from finding peace. Regardless of its direct and indirect causes, poverty subjects the
boys to the humiliation of resoling their rubber boots and suffering without proper food for years on end. Hunger is another
important and recurring theme in Angela’s Ashes, from the gnawing pain in the pit of the children’s stomachs in New York
and Limerick to the spiritual void left by their all-but-absent father. While other poor children’s families can at least afford to
feed them a proper Christmas dinner, the McCourts can manage only a pig’s head to offset their usual tea and bread.
Besides the physical discomfort and disease caused by malnutrition, Frank craves the parental love other boys might take
for granted, and seeks to fill the space left by his alcoholic father by feeding his soul as best he can. He associates the
ability to feed one’s family with high self-esteem and dignity, and yearns to provide for his mother and brothers as his father
proved unable to do.

Restrictions Imposed by Social Class and Religion

Social class is another overarching theme, for the Irish Catholics of Limerick as a community suffer similar limitations to the
McCourts and are trapped by the station they are born into rather than being mobile citizens able to find work easily.
Because of Malachy’s northern origins, he is unable to find a job in Limerick, and is driven to drink in a vicious, self-
perpetuating cycle that keeps the family from emerging from poverty as some of their neighbors are able to do by working
in England during the war.

Guilt Imposed by Catholicism

Guilt is a haunting backdrop throughout Frank’s childhood and adolescence, a feeling he attributes primarily to growing up
Catholic. He is constantly worrying about a sin he fears he may have committed, more frequently than not more
concerned about its consequences for other souls than his own. Whether agonizing about his first confession or debating
the likelihood that his first love Theresa Carmody is bound for hell, Frank is overcome with guilt for having sexual thoughts
and impulses. He is convinced, as are most of the local priests, that he is doomed if he does not reject these impure
thoughts and actions, yet he is unable to prevent their recurrence.

Metaphor Analysis

The River Shannon is described as a river whose dampness kills, but it is less the river itself than the poverty haunting the
inhabitants of its shores that causes the misfortune that besets the McCourt family and likely many of their neighbors. After
Margaret’s death in Brooklyn, Angela and Malachy are seeking a safe haven for their family, but instead of raising their boys
comfortably lose the twins within a year. While they outwardly blame the wet weather caused by Limerick’s river, there is no
doubt that it is but a metaphor for the sickness and death due to poverty.

A Pint of beer is supposedly all Malachy and his drinking chums are after in a pub, but inevitably Frank’s father arrives home
late and singing, without any of his earnings to share with his hungry family. This reference to the drinking problem of many
Irish fathers of the time is phrased as the alcoholic men themselves might have done, though it is the lack of being able to
drink just a single pint that is the very essence of the problem.
 Food is quite symbolic throughout the novel, for Frank associates a full stomach with a fulfilling life, and an empty one with
misery. He fantasizes about being able to provide fish and chips more regularly to his brothers as well, and will go so far as to
steal rather than beg to feed them. Frank associates the ability to provide food with dignity and self-respect, and when his
mother begs priests for corned beef, feels as low as he ever has in his life to see her brought so low.

Eggs are mentioned frequently as a symbol of food generally, a luxury which for so many in the world is accessible, yet for
the McCourts remains a special treat to be divided at least five ways for every family member to be able to taste the
precious food. They are reserved for special occasions, and Malachy is the first to sacrifice his portion for his children. Frank
associates eggs with the good life, and dreams of having them daily.

Ashes serve as not only half of the alliterative title, Angela’s Ashes, but a powerful image that haunts the entire book. The
ashes in the fireplace represent the fledgling cinders rather than roaring flames that sustain the hungry McCourts, who are
fortunate when they have enough coal to boil water for tea to perhaps be accompanied by some meager tea and bread
crusts. Angela finds comfort in smoking with her friends by the fire, staring blankly into the ashes in her search for meaning in
their misery and a way to sustain the family.

The English represent to the Irish all that is wrong in the world, and they blame their troubles on those who kept them
oppressed for eight hundred years. The class structure is only one of the miserable inheritances from English domination, but
it is the one that causes the most resentment by its victims. Malachy teaches his sons to die for Ireland, and most of Frank’s
teachers speak and think similarly of the English enemy.

1. “Dad says I’ll understand when I grow up. He tells me that all the time now and I want to be big like him so that I can
understand everything. It must be lovely to wake up in the morning and understand everything. I wish I could be like all the
big people in the church, standing and kneeling and praying and understanding everything.”
When Frank sees the Baby Jesus in church and asks his father about him being in heaven, he is told no, Our Lord was thirty-
three when he died, and is reminded that questions are not tolerated. His brother Malachy has been reprimanded
frequently for asking the meanings of words like affliction, and although the boys are honest and respectful with their
questions, adults have little patience for them and instead of answering usually tell them to go out and play and stop
bothering them. This attitude results in Frank hoping fervently that when he grows up the mysteries will be solved and he will
understand as apparently the grown-ups do. The irony is that the questions often remain unanswered out of ignorance and
impatience for children’s natural curiosity.

2. “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if
there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died
for Ireland or the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him
never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap and goes for a long walk.”
Frank is constantly told how grand it is to die for a cause, most frequently by his drunken father who comes home late and
wakes his sons to march them around the house promising to die for Ireland. Thinking about his baby sister Margaret and his
twin brothers Eugene and Oliver, all of whom died, Frank wonders whether anyone wants children to live. The difference in
his parents’ answers to the question about why his siblings died is revealing, for his father has not assumed any responsibility
for the poverty that has resulted in three of his children dying within a year.

3. “All right. Tell the priest if you like but the Angel on the Seventh Step said that only because you didn’t tell me first. Isn’t it
better to be able to tell your father your troubles rather than an angel who is a light and a voice in your head?” Frank has
been troubled over the word “piss” and the story of Emer, wife of the legendary Cuchulain, and believes hearing it has put
him in a state of sin and unworthy of his First Communion. Anxious about what to do, he consults with an angel he believes
speaks to him from the seventh step down from “Italy” in the family apartment and understands the response to be “Fear
not” and that he can tell the priest without worrying about any drastic consequences. Frank’s father tells him that he has
not sinned and need not trouble the priest, and with these words asks his son to confirm that it is preferable to talk to his
father directly about these concerns, to which Frank readily agrees “’Tis, Dad.” Sadly it is not always the case that his father
is available to his sons, for his drinking problem is so serious that their dominant impression of him is that of a drunkard
stumbling home in song.

4. “I’m seven, eight, nine going on ten and still Dad has no work. He drinks his tea in the morning, signs for the dole at the
Labour Exchange, reads the papers at the Carnegie Library, goes for his long walks far into the country. If he gets a job at
the Limerick Cement Company or Rank’s Flour Mills he loses it in the third week. He loses it because he goes to the pubs on
the third Friday of the job, drinks all his wages and misses the half day of work on Saturday morning.” Even before he is ten,
Frank recognizes his father’s pattern of abusing alcohol and its devastating consequences both for his employment and the
family’s survival. His description of the routine and the knowledge that even if his father is hired he will drink away the money
faster than he earned it illustrates his conscientiousness at a very young age. Like his mother, Frank realizes there is no hope
for his father to be “like other men,” drinking a pint or two without overindulging.

5. “There are Thursdays when Dad gets his dole money at the Labour Exchange and a man might say, Will we go for a pint,
Malachy? And Dad will say, One, only one, and the man will say, Oh, God, yes, one, and before the night is over all the
money is gone and Dad comes home singing and getting us out of bed to line up and promise to die for Ireland when the
call comes. He even gets Michael up and he’s only three but there he is singing and promising to die for Ireland at the first
opportunity.”
Recounting an imaginary conversation between his father and another man fond of drink, Frank even at his young age
understands his father knows no limits. He is physically and psychologically unable to stop after a single pint, and after
overindulging will subject his sons to the same songs and request to pledge to die for Ireland, which they do from the time
they can stand and talk, even in the middle of the night.

6. “My heart is banging away in my chest and I don’t know what to do because I know I’m raging inside like my mother by
the fire and all I can think of doing is running in and giving him a good kick in the leg and running out again but I don’t
because we have the mornings by the fire when he tells me about Cuchulain and DeValera and Roosevelt and if he’s there
drunk and buying pints with the baby’s money he has that look in his eyes Eugene had when he searched for Oliver and I
might as well go home and tell my mother a lie that I never saw him couldn’t find him.”
Frank doesn’t actually need to say a word. He knows as well as any adult that anyone who could drink away the new
baby’s money is gone “beyond the beyonds” as his mother says, and that it is as pointless to find him at this stage of his
drunkenness, as it is to share the predictable bad news with his mother. Frank’s thoughts turn to violence as he is angry with
his father selfishly putting the rest of the family through the tortures of hunger, but he also knows he cannot kick the man
who at times is indeed fatherly to him: by the fire first thing in the morning when the world is theirs and magical and peopled
by legendary heroes and world leaders only a father can adequately tell about.

7. “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 the 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.”
Even as a young boy, Frank is able to separate his father the man from Malachy the alcoholic. He cherishes their fireside
chats over tea each morning, and fondly reminisces about the tales of Cuchulain and other Irish legends he appreciates
thanks to his father’s storytelling. Frank is a true Catholic, and despite the church’s repeated rejections of him and of his
family, he sincerely believes in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and makes a flattering comparison between this three-
part Christian God and his only two-thirds redeemable parent. As a child Frank forgives his father’s serious flaws and prefers
to try to understand or even pity him. It is only later, when his father wastes on drink the money wired for his new baby
brother, that Frank expresses anger towards Malachy for his irresponsible behavior.

8. “Malachy tells Aunt Aggie one day he’s hungry and cold he have a piece of bread. She hits him with a rolled-up Little
Messenger of the Sacred Heart and there are tears on his eyelashes. He doesn’t come home from school the next day and
he’s still gone at bedtime. Aunt Aggie says, Well, I suppose he ran away. Good riddance. If he was hungry he’d be here. Let
him find comfort in a ditch.”
When their mother catches pneumonia, the boys temporarily live with Aunt Aggie until their father responds to the letter
they write him asking for money for food and diapers. Aggie is not pleased to have the responsibility of caring for the three
boys and the baby, and makes her distaste clear. Her physical violence further embitters Malachy, who leaves and camps
out at the family residence, where Frank finds him the following day when their father appears. Two days later their mother is
able to come home from the hospital, and their father is off again to England although the telegrams continue not to
appear for the boys’ father drinks away his earnings abroad just as he did at home.

9. “I wish the boys at Leamy’s could see me now, the way I drive the horse and handle the bags, the way I do everything
while Mr. Hannon rests his legs. I wish they could see me pushing the handcart to South’s pub and having my lemonade with
Mr. Hannon and Uncle Pa and me all black and Bill Galvin all white. I’d like to show the world the tips Mr. Hannon lets me
keep, four shillings, and the shilling he gives me for the morning’s work, five shillings altogether.”
Frank is proud to be hired at age eleven to assist the neighbor, Mr. Hannon, whose bad legs no longer permit him to make
coal deliveries. Frank’s mother agrees since they can use the money, though doubts the wisdom of her decision when she
sees the negative effect on Frank’s eyes. He begs to keep the job, and is pleased when the boys stop calling him names
and instead envy him being employed so young. He continues helping until Mr. Hannon’s legs are so bad he must be
hospitalized. Mrs. Hannon calls Frank in to tell him the news and remind him his job is school. Although it lacks the glamour of
staining his skin and generating income, let alone tips, Frank understands and tries to hide the tears that sting his eyes when
she tells him he’s been like a son to Mr. Hannon.

10. “Frost is already whitening the fresh earth on the grave and I think of Theresa cold in the coffin, the red hair, the green
eyes. I can’t understand the feelings going through me but I know that with all the people who died in my family and all the
people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I
never will again.”
When he delivers a telegram to the Carmody residence, Frank meets the teenage Theresa, a victim of tuberculosis eager to
lose her virginity before her early death. Although at first he doesn’t understand what is happening, the two not only have
sexual intercourse on the green sofa, but also fall in love. Frank feels tenderly for Theresa and stops taking the shilling tip
because he is at the house for pleasure more than work. When Theresa no longer answers the door, he knows she is in the
sanatorium. When she dies he follows the funeral to the graveyard, though lacking any formal, public relationship with
Theresa and her family he stays out of sight, suffering in silence and solitude the loss of his first love.