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Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt has the unlucky experience of growing up in poverty. Being so poor in a place like Ireland means that he and his family come up against many struggles related to the weather. They are...
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Angela's Ashes
What makes Angela's Ashes novelistic is the way McCourt treats his younger self as a character in a novel. He is not interested in a factual memoir of his life as much as in a spiritual exploration...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
The story is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s and beyond, as it extends into World War II and its aftermath. It begins in Brooklyn, New York, where Frank is born in 1930. However,...
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Angela's Ashes
Similarities between Angela's Ashes and In America: Both Angela's Ashes and the movie In America are classic immigrant stories. Though the general plot lines, characters, and even setting of each...
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Angela's Ashes
In chapter 17, Frank says that Mrs. Finucane sends him money to take to priests. She hopes that the priests will take the money and in return offer up prayers "for her soul." Mrs. Finucane is...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
One reason I can think of to read this novel is that it is a story of survival. The author is writing about his childhood, which is dysfunctional and one of extreme poverty and deprivation, yet it...
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Angela's Ashes
Because Frank McCourt's books, "Angela's Ashes" and "Tis," represent his best known work, and because they are autobiographical, it is not possible to suggest a thesis statement about him that does...
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Angela's Ashes
Angela's only comfort, as she would say herself, were her Woodbine cigarettes, which she smoked with her husband (when he was home) while they sat by the fire looking at the firewood consume...
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Angela's Ashes
Concerning your question about Angela's Ashes, I suggest you assert in your thesis what the details you mention contribute to the novel. In other words, your research question might be: what...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
This novel is a "coming-of-age" story about Frank McCourt's childhood. One of the most revealing quotations from the novel is,“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at...
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Angela's Ashes
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,...
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Angela's Ashes
I can answer part of your question about Angela's Ashes. The book is so successful, in part, because the setting is Ireland, which has been a romantic favorite of readers for generations. The...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
A good example of Frank's breaking the rules comes when he's admitted to hospital after suddenly coming down with typhoid fever. The hospital, which is run by the Catholic Church, has very strict...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt suffered from typhoid fever. A portion of the autobiography, "Typhoid Fever," is often excerpted and anthologized. In this excerpt, Frank's condition is discussed as well as his...
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Angela's Ashes
Yikes! Good question! The character of Frank McCourt, in the autobiographical novel Angela's Ashes, changes significantly as the story progresses. We first see Frank in a dependent role as the U.S...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
On the day of Eugene's funeral, Frank's father must be retrieved from the local pub in order to attend the service. When he places his pint of Guiness on top of the white coffin, the image is as...
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Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes chronicles what had to be one of the most miserable childhoods in the history of memoirs, that of Frank McCourt, growing up in England and Protestant-hating Limerick, Ireland in the...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
It may have been, since the family was so deeply rooted to their Irish culture and rituals, that the practice of throwing water is directly related to an ancient tradition for the protection of the...
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Angela's Ashes
Frankie ends up in the hospital because he contracts Typhoid Fever. It is in the hospital where he is first exposed to great literature--in fact, it is where he first learns about Shakespeare. He...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
In this chapter, Frank comes down with typhoid fever and must be hospitalized. While he is in the hospital, he learns two important things. First of all, his father comes to visit him and kisses...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
Pat "Ab" Sheehan, "The Abbot," is Frank's uncle. He was dropped on his head as a baby, which caused him permanent brain damage. Nevertheless, he's still pretty good at counting the money he makes...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
"The Highwayman" is a poem by Alfred Noyes. Young Frank is reading the poem and cannot interpret it correcty. He would like to ask his brother for help, but his brother "doesn't know" poetry. Bess...
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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...
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Angela's Ashes
Addiction is a major theme throughout Angela's Ashes, and is more ambiguous than it may first appear. The most obvious example of addiction in the novel is Malachy's alcoholism, which condemns him,...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
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...
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Angela's Ashes
The irony is that the McCourts had very little as a result of the father's drinking habit and were in ruin. Still, they try to survive as best as they could with the help and support that the...
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Angela's Ashes
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,...
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Angela's Ashes
The squalor and filth in which the McCourt children have to live is unbelievable. I suppose you are referring to the incident in the book where the bottom floor gets flooded out, so the family...
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Angela's Ashes
Frank McCourt’s autobiographical novel Angela’s Ashes recounts the author’s impoverished life in Limerick, Ireland, until he left returned to America at the age of nineteen. While it is a...
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Angela's Ashes
Formal education played a very small role in the family's life in this book. I add that qualifier because Frank McCourt eventually became a teacher, and formal education became a central part of...
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Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's autobiographical account of the first nineteen years of his life, some of which are spent in America. When they are unable to make a go of it in the United States,...