ANGELA'S ASHES

Angela's Ashes



Angela's Ashes

Introduction

This assignment is not only to look at the scenes of the story, but also study the culture background of the book. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes happened to a book that strongly point out a country's unique traditions---Ireland, a poor country with anti-English sentiment. The Irishiness is clearly presented in the novel. The author uses several skills to give the sentences the Irish feeling such as in the language that the people speak and in the way that the values of people are shown to the reader.

Angela and Malachy's children wee all raised up in America up to a certain age, so they all have American accents when they speak. When they first arrived this small town Limbrick, both the adults and children called them 'Yanks'. However, they soon adapt the Limbrick accents because their father wants them to be real Irish men, men from Northern England, and have the exact accent that he has. McCourt described at the opining lines of the memoir that shown the sorrow he had gone thorough as a child to 'the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred years long.' Almost all the adult characters express great hatred with the past English invasions of Ireland. Angela's children had no choice but accept this kind of thoughts. Frank is brought up assuming that the English are basically evil. Nevertheless, when Mr. O'Halloran say that the Irish, as well as the English, committed cruel actions in battle; when Frank heard about this, he started to question the statement that Irishmen versus Englishmen means good versus evil(Lenz, 2000).

When people talk about Ireland, one thing will probably be the religion. There are Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, and the two groups do not get along with each other. Both groups have been fighting in Northern Ireland as one can remember, For example, on page 194; Frank says this about the Protestants: "I feel sorry for the beautiful Protestant girls, they're doomed. That's what the priests tell us. Outside the Catholic church there is nothing but doom." This is what the Catholic people had believed all their lives and they pass this belief to the next generation.

Richer people are not welcomed at that period of time. This is really cleared in the book and examples are everywhere. For instance, when Frank got his job as a telegram boy, he talks about which kinds of people give tips. Generally speaking, widows and Protestants ministers' wives and poor and those people are kind enough to give him tips. As for people who own huge houses, they do not give ant tips. This reflect the fact that the people who struggling to survive give the little as they can while people that have enough money do not give anything to the poor. Another example is that when Angela goes to a shop to but a pound of flour, Mrs McGrath presses her hip on the scale so there is less than one pound ...