Angela's Ashes

Margaret dies as an infant, while the McCourt family is living in Brooklyn. Frank McCourt portrays this death as being the catalyst for the family returning to Ireland; life in Brooklyn is just...

Frank McCourt writes this memoir of his childhood and adolescence in Ireland in order to come to terms, after the death of his parents, with the past that formed him, and to write a darkly comic...

A case in point where Frank breaks the rules happens when he is hospitalized immediately after he is diagnosed with typhoid fever. The medical institution has stringent rules towards male and...

A confraternity is a volunteer group which does good works, usually in the name of a church or other religious institution. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt is set primarily in Limerick, Ireland,...

On the day of Frank's Confirmation, he is suddenly struck with an unstoppable nosebleed and falls terribly ill. Within a few days, a doctor diagnoses him with typhoid fever, and Frank goes to the...

Frank first developed a love of literature when he was confined to the hospital with typhoid. At that time, which is actually recounted in Chapter 8, he says, "It's lovely to know the world can't...

Setanta is the name that Cuchulain, a mythological Irish hero, had when he was a boy. Frank McCourt first learns the story of Cuchulain, or Setanta, from his father while the family is living in...

Frank McCourt's family relies almost exclusively on charity, the Church and luck to survive the poverty in which they found themselves. The Catholic Church in the town operated thrift stores and...

Exile is a form of displacement, physical or mental; it is almost always personal. This means being in exile results from a person alienating and/or isolating himself or herself, from his/her...

When Frank was in the Fever Hospital suffering with typhoid, he began to love poetry. Patricia Madigan, the girl next to him who was suffering from diphtheria, read him a poem about a highwayman...

The hospital has very strict rules, not all of which make a lot of sense. The Catholic Church is a primary influence in Ireland at this time, and part of the reason Sister Rita has forbidden Frank...

The title immediately makes us think of some kind of cremation and the death of Angela, the main character, who is actually one of the few characters who doesn't die or otherwise disappear in the...

At the time when Angela's Ashes is set, Ireland was virtually a Catholic theocracy in which the Catholic Church exercised a powerful influence over every single aspect of public life. Even in...

Near the end of Chapter two, of "Angela's Ashes," Franks younger brother, Eugene dies from pneumonia shortly after they have lost Oliver the same way. On the day of the funeral Frank's father...

The main ongoing conflict in Frank McCourt's novel Angela's Ashes is his mother's ongoing battle to keep her children from starving while her husband, McCourt's father, a semi-functional alcoholic,...

IRA stands for Irish Republican Army. it was created in 1919 with Michael Collins at the head.The IRA was a militant nationalist group whose purpose was to end British rule in Ireland, replacing it...

Both the book Angela's Ashes and the movie Lost in Translation are stories about the strength of the human spirit and about the ways people can find hope and faith even in the face of loss and...

Interesting to see this question at this particular time, since Frank McCourt died just about a week ago. Angela of the title was McCourt's long-suffering mother, forced to raise her family in...

I think what makes Angela's Ashes so compelling is that McCourt somehow manages to tell his tale without gloss. It is difficult to write a good memoir, one that reveals the unvarnished truth of a...

This part of this incredible autobiography occurs in Chapter Seventeen, when the narrator becomes burdened by his many sins which have reached their climax after he hit his mother because of her...

In chapter 3 of "Angela's Ashes" the family is on the "dole" again but the income is still not enough. Mrs. McCourt has been going to the St. Vincent de Paul Society for extra food and help in...

Like most of the authority figures in Angela's Ashes, Mr. Benson isn't portrayed in a particularly flattering way. He's an angry man, constantly shouting at the boys, inadvertently spitting at them...

The Irish make up a huge part of our culture and our history, and very few people know anything about life in Ireland in the tough times. McCourt gives us an eloquently written, fine example of...

One of the life lessons that McCourt gains as a result of living with poverty is understanding its role in developing human identity. McCourt never begrudges or complains of the poverty in which...

Frank (the protagonist and author) emotionally progresses through the memoir following a classic bildungsroman structure. This is a German version of the “coming-of-age story” that evolved out of...

Both Angela's Ashes and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn are framed as a bildungsroman, or coming of age story. The reader witnesses Frank and Francie building their characters against the backdrop of...

Well, that depends on who is doing the treating. The doctors and nurses show little concern for his emotional state and less for his happiness. He and Patricia get told off for talking to one...

Although McCourt does not editorialize (meaning he does not exaggerate or add emotion), there is a clear message about poverty and social class in this story. His father's alcoholism, the deaths...

During his years in the squalid slums of Limerick, Frankie, whose family rarely has the two penny price of admission to the theater, manages to get in to the see the movies in a variety of...

Another indication to the narrator that his mother is sick is Angela's inability to sleep that night. She tosses and turns and moans for water. The boys are kept awake by the sounds of her bed...

In the novel "Angela's Ashes," Frank discovers Shakespeare, English History, and poetry while in the hospital for typhoid Patricia, a girl across the hall in the Diphtheria room, begin to talk....

McCourt uses a wry, sardonic tone as he outlines the miseries of his poor Irish youth with a stereotypically drunken father and a defeated, pious mother, and the miseries of his family's wet...

From the points you mention, it seems as though you are veering towards an argument about how the tone of the memoir undercuts and lightens the dark subject matter. Frank McCourt describes an...

Irish identity is an important theme in Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s memoir. Though there’s much to be said about this topic, we could narrow your question down to four key components. What does...

One character who is easily identifiable by class based on the criteria you've outlined here is Paddy Clohessy, Frank's childhood friend. Paddy is seven years old, one of six children, a typical...

An ash represents something that has burned up or been destroyed. I think this represents Angela's family. It has been destroyed. There is no home. Her husband is gone and her sons have died or...

Poverty is a central theme in Angela's Ashes, and Frankie, his siblings and parents were involved in a daily struggle for survival. Specifically, Angela, Frank's mother, begs and borrows from the...

It is important to understand that Angela’s Ashes is a biographical account of the life of a dysfunctional family between their homes in the US and Ireland. There is no doubt, right from the...

Frank catches typhoid fever and ends up in the hospital. He has his own room, and very few visitors. While there, the girl in the room next door begins talking to him through the wall. She is...

It is Frank's 14th birthday and he was lucky enough to find work at the post office as a lower-end messenger. The reason why Aunt Aggie buys Frank new clothes is because, as he reported to work,...

As a devout Roman Catholic, this book remains very close to my heart! Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes introduces traditions which are both positive and negative in their eventual outcomes in life....

Frank's brother Malachy, a year younger, is a beautiful child, with "blue eyes like...mother...golden hair and pink cheeks". Frank, in contrast, looks more like their father, with...

One of the main themes of this story that cannot be ignored is that of poverty. The poverty in which the McCourt family lives is shown to be brutal, unyielding and pervasive. It is clear that in...

At that time in Ireland, hospitals were run by the Catholic Church, which had a huge influence on all aspects of society. Although the primary purpose of a hospital is supposed to be make sick...

Fintan Slattery lives alone with his mother, who is extremely religious. His flat on Catherine Street "is like a chapel", and there are "all kinds of religious magazines" and books inside, as well...

Everyone knows that hindsight is 20/20--it's always easier to look back on the past and to see everything much more clearly through a new lens. Frank McCourt's childhood was one of poverty, hunger,...