Angela's Ashes Analysis

New York, New YorkMalachy Sr. ended up in New York after being sneaked out of Ireland following some violent incident with the IRA that's only hinted at in the memoir. Angela's sent off to America...

As a memoir, the narrative is of course written in the first-person. Thanks to this point of view, we're drawn in and get to see everything through McCourt's eyes (or rather the eyes of young Frank...

A memoir and an autobiography have a lot in common, so what exactly sets them apart? For starters, a memoir's not based on facts and dates (yes, they're important but they don't have to be 100% acc...

You'd think a memoir that has to do with poverty, death, and starvation would be really depressing. But the thing is, it's not, at least not usually. So what is it about McCourt's tone that makes s...

Frank McCourt is, well, frank. When we read Angela's Ashes, we can't help but feel like we're listening to an old friend telling us about his really interesting, albeit sad, childhood. The writing...

The ashes in the fireplace, the ashes that fall from Angela's endless cigarettes—they're all byproducts of Angela's sad and hopeless life. Ashes are lifeless, they're what's left over when the fi...

The memoir ends with Frank and a shipmate standing on the deck of the ship in his first night in America. He's just had a sexual romp with an American woman, with a priest standing outside the door...

The (not so) bad: The book is chock full of Irish colloquialisms, like "eejit" and "blaguard". It also takes place in a time and culture very different to ours, which makes some of the allusions an...

Goodbye America, Hello IrelandIt all begins where it ends: America. At the beginning of the book, Frank and the McCourt clan are leaving the glistening shores of America after a failed life there a...

Memoirs are a little tougher to Bookerize than novels because the events are driven by (mostly) real events rather than the writer's construction of a story from scratch. Still, we nominate "Rags t...

In the McCourts' world, when it rains, it pours. The move from America to Ireland is a catastrophic mistake. Ireland is cold, wet, and squalid. Daddy McCourt is an alcoholic who drinks away all the...

Just in case you can't get enough of Frank McCourt's memoirs, his little brother Alphie has jumped on the memoir bandwagon. His memoir is titled, A Long Stone's Throw. (Source) Frank McCourt was s...

It should come as no surprise that Angela's Ashes, a coming of age memoir, has several scenes of a sexual nature. Given that having sex is seen as a mark of adulthood, the topic becomes extremely...

William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act 2 Scene 4 (8.88, 8.126) Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal (7.62, 7.65, 7.76)William Shakespeare (8.90, 8.91, 12.62, 12.74)Alfred Noyes, "...