How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Delia says something has to be done about Angela and those children for they are a disgrace, so they are, enough to make you ashamed to be related. A letter has to be written to Angela's mother. (1.307)
Point blank: appearances matter. The McNamara sisters aren't concerned about the welfare of the kids or Angela. They're just concerned about how the McCourts' poverty affects them and their social status. Where's the charity and compassion? That comes from the neighbors, who are almost as poor as the McCourts.
Quote #2
The woman behind the counter is pleasant to Mam in her American coat till Mam shows the St. Vincent de Paul docket. The woman says, I don't know what you're doing here at this hour of the day. I never serve charity cases before six in the evening. But this is your first time and I'll make an exception. (2.179)
The woman behind the counter assumes from Angela's coat that she's a paying customer. In McCourt's Ireland what you wear determines not only how people treat you but also how far you get in life. The family's ragged clothing immediately signals "low class."
Quote #3
He puts on his tie and his cap and goes to the Labour Exchange to sign for the dole. He will never leave the house without collar and tie. A man without a collar and tie is a man with no respect for himself. You never know when the clerk at the Labour Exchange might tell you there's a job going at Rank's Flour Mills or the Limerick Cement Company, and even if it's a laboring job what will they think if you appear without collar and tie? (3. 20)
Pride. Self-Respect. Dignity. This is another passage where McCourt shows the importance of clothing conveying social class. Malachy Sr. believes that with the right clothing he's more likely to get offered a job. As a Northerner, he has to be especially careful about this.
Quote #4
I'll tell you what it is, she says. 'Tis class distinction. They don't want boys from lanes on the altar. They don't want the ones with scabby knees and hair sticking up. Oh, no, they want the nice boys with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs. That's what it is and 'tis hard to hold on to the Faith with the snobbery that's in it. (5.126)
Getting in with The Plastics is a piece of cake compared to getting into the upper echelons of McCourt's Ireland. McCourt's no fan of the Catholic Church—he sees the well-fed, well-dressed priests as allied with the rich classes.
Quote #5
I'd like to be a Jesuit some day but there's no hope of that when you grow up in a lane. Jesuits are very particular. They don't like poor people. They like people with motor cars who stick out their little fingers when they pick up their teacups. (10.59)
You can see how this class consciousness destroys Frank's hope from a really early age. There are certain futures that he knows are closed to him.
Quote #6
My mother is a beggar now and if anyone from the lane or my school sees her the family will be disgraced entirely. My pals will make up new names and torment me in the schoolyard and I know what they'll say,
Frankie McCourt
beggar woman's boy
scabby-eyed
dancing
blubber-gob
Jap (10.88)
There are levels of poverty and the McCourts have just hit rock bottom. It was bad enough when they were on the dole; it was even worse when they had to take money from the St. Vincent de Paul Society; but now it's just plain mortifying. In Limerick, sometimes it seems like starving is a better option than getting your money from the dispensary. People from the lowest class had nothing but their self-respect, so losing that by going to the dispensary was the worst. Most of the McCourts' neighbors are just as poor as they are, but we guess it makes you feel better if you can point to someone even worse off. Psychologists call this coping strategy "downward comparison," and it works. Like when you're trying to decide how good looking you are, it doesn't help to be looking at photos of Jennifer Lawrence.
Quote #7
Mr. O'Halloran tells the class it's a disgrace that boys like McCourt, Clarke, Kennedy, have to hew wood and draw water. He is disgusted by this free and independent Ireland that keeps a class system foisted on us by the English, that we are throwing our talented children on the dungheap. (13.58)
Mr. O'Halloran sees the injustice here. All of his good pupils just aren't "good" enough in the eyes of the system. He can't bear to see his promising students going nowhere. He blames the situation on centuries of English discrimination against the Irish Catholics. Even though in this book it's other Irish who are doing the discriminating, Mr. O'Halloran knows that the patterns of history are hard to change.
Quote #8
Little Barrington Street. That's a lane. Why are you calling it a street? You live in a lane, not a street.
They call it a street, Mr. McCaffrey.
Don't be getting above yourself, boy.
Oh, I wouldn't, Mr. McCaffrey.
You live in a lane and that means you have nowhere to go but up. (16.96-100)
The lane is another term for the ghetto, the slums, skid row. We don't think that Mr. McCaffrey is being mean to Frank; he's just telling Frank to become Zen with where he's from because that means he's only got one way to go: up and out of the lanes.
Quote #9
Mrs. O'Connell has the tight mouth and she won't look at me. She says to Miss Barry, I hear a certain upstart from the lanes walked away from the post office exam. Too good for it, I suppose.
Mrs. O'Connell talks past me to the boys waiting on the bench for their telegrams. This is Frankie McCourt who thinks he's too good for the post office.
I don't think that, Mrs. O'Connell.
And who asked you to open your gob, Mr. High and Mighty? Too grand for us, isn't he boys? (16.120; 133-135)
It's not just the upper classes that that clamp down on the poor kids who want to aim higher. There's plenty of discouragement from the working classes, too, who try to shame Frankie into giving up his dreams. Kind of reminds us of that scene in Superbad when Seth tries to shame Evan about going to an elite college, but then they make up because he realizes he loves his buddy and really wants what's best for him and they say, "I love you man," and…sorry, give us a minute to pull ourselves together.
Quote #10
Malachy goes to England to work in a rich Catholic boys' boarding school, and he walks around cheerful and smiling as if he's the equal of any boy in the school and everyone knows when you work in an English boarding school you're supposed to hang your head and shuffle like a proper Irish servant. They fire him for his ways and Malachy tells them they can kiss his royal Irish arse and they say that's the kind of foul language you'd expect. (17.175)
Poor Malachy's the victim of stereotypes and prejudice. He finds out what happens when you don't know your place. He's just a confident, happy guy, and they see that as "uppity." He ends up coming home and working in the coal mines. Like Frank, he sees only one escape—America.