The role of angela in angelas ashes
The role of angela in angela’s ashesIn Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s mother Angela sacrifices her pride and her dignity to help family survive at all costs. Angela does everything she can to help her family survive, no matter how it scars her family or her children. Malachy cannot deal with reality and the poverty that the family is experiencing. At numerous points throughout the story Angela sacrifices the family’s dignity by taking charge of Malachy’s dole money, begging at the Saint Vincent De Paul society, and picking trash up off the street to keep them warm.
When the McCourts arrive back in Ireland, Malachy begins to drink as he did in America because he cannot deal with the realities that face him in his life. Three of his children have died, his family lives in poverty, and his children and wife have to beg to survive, but instead of getting a decent job and sticking with it — he will work the job for awhile then drink his wages away and eventually lose his job to a hangover. Angela finally has had enough of his problems and decides to go with him to the Labour Exchange to take the money before he can spend it on the pint. “On Thursday Mam follows Dad to the Labour Exchange. She marches in behind him and when the man pushes toward Dad and she takes it. The other men on the dole nudge each other and grin and Dad is disgraced because a woman is never supposed to interfere with a man’s dole money.”(p. 78) With this money she can buy new boots for her children for their first day of school at Leamy’s National School.
When Oliver dies in Limerick, Mam sacrifices her dignity as mother and sends her children away while she rests in bed. “Grandma comes and tells Mam she has to get up. There are children alive and they need their mother.” (p.85) Angela knows she needs to be a mother but by sacrificing her motherhood, she rests, and she mourns for her children who have passed on and in a sense regains her strength so she can deal with her other children.
Malachy’s “pride” and “dignity” is actually the downfall for the family, Malachy is too proud and can’t deal with some people maybe thinking he has no respect for himself. Angela doesn’t understand because she will do anything for her children and Malachy doesn’t understand what it is to be totally devoted to a person. “Mam says ’tis alright for her to be begging at the Saint Vincent De Paul Society for a docket for food but he can’t stick a few spuds in his pocket. He says it’s different for a man. You have to keep the dignity.”(p.95) To Angela, dignity doesn’t matter when her children are starving and need new shoes. To Malachy “dignity” is just another mask that he hides behind, like the pint, to hide from the reality. Malachy also will not degrade himself no matter what kind of circumstances there are.
Another good example of Malachy’s phobia is on Christmas Eve, there is not enough coal to cook their dinner and Malachy will not go through the streets and pick up coal, it seems as if he would rather have his family starve than pick up coal. “There is no use asking Dad to go because he will never stoop that low and even if he did he won’t carry things through the streets. It’s a rule he has.”(p.99)
With Angela trying to keep her family together and Malachy tearing it up unknowingly the two will fight about begging and “dignity” and their pride. “Dad is telling Mam up in Italy she should never beg like that. What do you mean beg? Don’t you have any pride begging like that? And what would you do Mr. Grand Manner? Would you let them go barefoot? I’d rather fix the shoes they have.”(p.104) This piece of dialogue is the perfect for proving the point that Angela will do anything, beg to anyone to get her children new shoes so they can be somewhat comfortable with the conditions they live in. Malachy insists that he will repair the shoes and by doing so he makes the shoes worse and a hazard for the kids they both almost fall due to the repairs.
Frank McCourt idolizes Angela and her ways of survival. After writing this paper I believe I have a better understanding of McCourt’s attitude towards his father and why he cannot forgive him. Malachy, if he did anything, made Angela want to push harder and sacrifice more for her children. Angela was the life force behind the family and really what kept her family together, through her sacrifices her children learned of compassion and understanding for the human being that Malachy could have never shown them. In conclusion what Angela did was saintly and purely for the good of her children, she sacrificed many things in her life so that her children could survive and thrive in the world and have a better understanding of life.
** McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.