Angela's Ashes

There are certain novels that have the ability to emotionally move and captivate an audience, however, it is quite an accomplishment to write a marvelous piece of artwork that spans from the brink of truth. In Angela’s Ashes, one can acknowledge that there are immense amounts of pain, suffering, and agony through the words of Frank McCourt. We as readers experience the unbearable truths that he had enough strength in his heart to put his painful memories into memoir form to put into fruition this great novel. “ Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.” Benjamin Franklin. This quote justifies the struggles the Mccourt family weathered throughout the course of their lives.
The McCourt family is a typical Irish family during the struggles of the late thirties and early forties. During this time there was a depression in Ireland and also much crop and financial difficulty. During this distressing time, both mother and father in this memoir are extremely poor, just struggling to keep bread on the table for their large family. As with many Irish men, the stress levels were increased and on account, and consequently, the father took to heavy liquor. Life in Ireland became so stressful to the point where he completely intoxicated himself. “ Go out Frankie, you shouldn’t see your Father like this. Stay on the playground” (29).
Father had so much stress upon his chest that he could not keep a job, and with the sparse change he acquired, he bought liquor to ease the pain. The entire family lived in immense poverty. They had barley any acquisitions, sustenance, or garments to keep the family well -cared for. A mother and father know their roles in society are to keep their children content and healthy. When they know they aren’t fulfilling their children’s needs, they feel helpless and full of failure. Poverty wrecked both parent’s lives, and bashed in both parent’s spirit and vigor for life.
Mam is also a victim to poverty’s dark unmerciful wrath. She has gone through tremendous amounts of pain and agony from the death of her own child, through cries of hunger form her children, to illness and financial difficulties. Mam is a lifeless and dull spirit by the end of the memoir. Not only does she believe to be a failure financially and as a Mother, but she was also rejected socially. “ Angelina was nothing but a rabbit, and they wanted nothing to do with her” (McCourt,19).
Frank is so upset with his mother by her way she cared them. Even to the fact where this quote becomes irony: “Love her as in childhood, though feeble, old and grey. For you’ll never miss a mother’s love, till she’s buried beneath the clay” (McCourt, 14). Frank becomes so upset with his mother that he becomes drunk and yells at her brutally. “ I’ll talk to you any way I like… I slap her on the cheek so that tears jump in her eyes” (341). Poverty within the family can tumultuously tear apart a family, to the point where even relationships and sociality becomes swallowed by the affects of poverty. Both parents lost all of their vigor for life and truly became lifeless lumps of what used to be people. They are two very defeated parents taxed by the affects of impoverished life. Both of them felt like failures to the point where they could not give their children proper lives. Not only could they not financially provide for their children, but they also embedded horrific traumatic memories and actions that scarred their lives forever. Seeing their father wasted, their mother depressed and crying, the sickness and death spewing all around them; these are all highly traumatic situations that these poor children had to endure.
Benjamin Franklin’s quote relates to Angela’s Ashes because poverty truly did shear the life and spirit out of the entire family. If one takes the perspective of the Father, the reader will see that he probably thought he was a failure of a man. That he was a waste of life because he couldn’t even take care of his own family, and he took to drink to escape the best he could from reality. If only he knew when he drank, he hurt his family more. When he was trying to escape life, he was trying to escape his very family. Poverty stripped the Father of all his pride and spirit. It exposed him to weakness, to liquor, which weakens a man more. Liquor is for hopeless men, and poverty drove Father to drink wildly.
The mother as well suffered tremendously. This poor woman lost her beloved daughter from illness, and felt socially rejected by everyone around her. She had to see her children cry of hunger, of coldness, and of illness. Mother also had to see her own children she brought into the world suffer. That will drive any woman to the brink of heartbreak and nervous breakdown. She was physiologically damaged by the traumatic affects of her life. On the account of these traumas, she became a depressant and neglecting of her children’s needs. Poverty also deprived the mother of her spirit and her motherliness qualities because she lacked in their care. Poverty turned both parents into empty- shelled human beings with absolutely no desire to live or thrive.
The affect of the empty bag means that there’s absolutely nothing left within the soul of a person stricken by poverty. It is affirmative that both parents lost their heart, spirit, and love of life, but with struggles like the ones Ma and Pa endured, most people would have also become empty- shelled beings.
Poverty truly does have the affect of stripping pride, spirit, and happiness fro the heart of man.
Man is such a delicate being that can be stripped from the love of life through the brutality of poverty. Once a human is stripped of love, pride, happiness, and spirit, what is truly left to weigh a person down? What is truly left of a person deprived of their love for life? Nothing exists anymore. The person becomes weightless, comparable to an empty paper bag stripped of its inner components: love, life, and happiness. These empty paper bags fall, fall straight to the ground. And these empty bags were once beautiful people that at one time did stand.