McCourt, Frank - Angela´s Ashes - How does he present the living conditions and situation in Ireland in the 1930s and 40s in his novel?

LIST OF CONTENT

I. Introduction to my Facharbeit
- Why did I choose this topic?
- How did I use my literature?

II. Important historical problems for the Irish population
- The "great famine" in the 19th century
- Northern-Ireland-Conflict/Conflicts between Protestants and Catholics
- IRA (Irish Republican Army)

III. Short introduction to Frank McCourt and his novel "Angela´s Ashes"
- Short biography of Frank McCourt
- Why did he write this novel?

IV. Explanation and analysation of the living conditions and situation in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s by means of Frank McCourts´ novel "Angela´s Ashes"

V. End Page
- Final comment to the novel "Angela´s Ashes"
- My opinion of the novel and the living conditions in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s

I. Introduction to my Facharbeit

After reading the novel „Angela´s Ashes“ written by Frank McCourt, I was very interested in the Irish history. Also nowadays we often hear of big conflicts in Ireland, for example in connection to the IRA or the Northern-Ireland-Conflict. In my Facharbeit I wanted to work out the most important aspects of the living conditions during the 1930s and 40s in Ireland, especially in regard to the most mentioned points in the novel.

My secondary literature is as well used in point II as in point IV, the main point of my Facharbeit. In point IV Frank McCourts´ statements are often proved by secondary literature.

You can find the literature list at the end of my Facharbeit.

I went on with my work as follows:

During I read the novel, I underlined important phrases and quotations. After that, I made a list and sorted the proofs according to several topics, like poverty, patriotism, history or prejudices. The next thing was to find scientific texts to prove what is written in the novel. Only when I had finished that preparatory work, I could start to write a coherent text.

Important historical problems to the Irish people

The "great famine" had her "debut" in Ireland in 1845. The potato plant was attacked by a sort of fungus. Today the scientists suppose that the epidemic was brought from south America.

Most of the Irish people were addicted to the potatoes, because it was their only foodstuff. There was a rot in the years 1846, 1847 and 1848, too.

Many people had to sell their possession to buy other things to eat. In England the government had changed, the Whigs came into power, and they were against food donution, first. Only in 1847, as the population had to go hungry, they opened so called "supper kitchens". During the "great famine", Ireland lost a fourth of his hole population.¹

The Northern-Ireland-Conflict was actual an independence war of the Catholic population in the north of Ireland against the English or Protestant predominance. In 1300 England had the power over two thirds of the isle. The Irish put up resistance against that system. In 1919 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) was founded. The IRA fought for an undivided Ireland which is independent of Great Britain.

There was a guerrilla war against the Great Britain army. The IRA is a radical part of the Sinn Féin party and the problem is still current. In 1994 a armistice was announced but because of a reach of deadlock during the negotiations about peace, in 1996 there were new attempts.

In april 1998, the Stormont agreement was settled. The Stormont agreement is a peace treaty between the Sinn Féin and the british Prime Minister. Since then the attempts are nearly stopped.²

Short introduction to Frank McCourt and his novel "Angela´s Ashes"

Frank McCourt was born in New York in the year 1930. When he was four years old, he settled back to Ireland where his parents had come from.

In Ireland he had to suffer because of the bad living conditions. His father was addicted to alcohol and they had not enough food and money. It was a very hard time for him and he learned to have responsibility because he was the eldest one of at least four children in the family.

All his life he wanted to write a book about what he experienced in his childhood and wanted to describe the bad living conditions in the 1930s and 1940s of Ireland. As he was retired, he finally had the time to do it.

Frank McCourts´ first novel "Angela´s Ashes", published in 1996, was a big bestseller in numerous countries and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Today 5 million copies are sold worldwide. "Angela´s Ashes" is his autobiography.

In 1999 the film of "Angela´s Ashes" was published and so was in the same year his second novel "Tis". "Tis" deals with the situation after Frank had emigrated to America. In America he was a teacher at several high schools. Now he is in retirement and enjoying his success.³

IV. Explanation and analysation of the living conditions and situation in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s by means of Frank McCourts´ novel "Angela´s Ashes"

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."⁴

This summary of Frank McCourt´s childhood is written on the first page of his novel Angela´s Ashes. The reader of something like that must think that there had to be extreme bad living conditions in Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s.

In my Facharbeit I want to describe and analyse how Frank McCourt presents his past, his childhood, in Ireland till he was 18.

The living conditions are the cause of many other problems the people of Ireland got at that time.

McCourt lived in Limerick, which is in the south-west of the Republic of Ireland and is situated at the mouth of the river Shannon.

After the people´s opinion, it was due to the river, that they were always ill. Their clothes never dried and because of this, because of the dampness, they became sick⁵.

"Above all-we were wet."⁶ "...the Shannon´s dampness that kills,..."⁷

After the McCourts came back to Ireland, Frank´s mother Angela got five boys more and to her joyness one girl. But there was not much time of joy. Margaret, the girl, died 7 month after her birth, and the twins Eugene and Oliver died, too. They died because of the hunger and of a sort of the tuberculosis.⁸ Once even Frank became ill. He had a very bad sort of bronchial preumonia and everybody thought he would die. But after Frank stayed several month in hospital and in quarantine he was healthy and especially his mom was happy, that she had not lost another child.

Frank´s father was unemployed when they returned to Ireland. He thought it was not problem to get a job, because he did his bit in the IRA. Bit means in this context that he was in the army. In Ireland there is no compulsory military service, just an army of volunteers⁹. But a man from the IRA could not find his name on a list and sent him away¹⁰. Frank´s father was from the north of Ireland, so he had, because of the prejudices towards people from the north, a big problem to find a job:

"Later, Dad goes to the Labour Exchange for the dole. There is no hope of a laboring for a man with a North of Ireland accent getting a job in Limerick."¹¹

Also Frank had to suffer because of his Dad´s origin:

" ´Look at that mop, it won´t lie down. You didn´t get that hair from my side of the family. That´s that North of Ireland hair you got from your father...If your mother had married a proper decent Limerickman you wouldn´t have this standing up, North of Ireland...hair.´"¹²

If his father after all had a job, he didn´t use the money he earned to feed his family who was starving. No, he used it to go to the pub and paid the complete wages of one week for alcohol. He was no isolated case. Many of the Irish men were addicted to alcohol.¹³

He even spent his last shillings for a pint in a pub, and often he lost his job because of this alcohol problem.¹⁴

A result of that was the poverty of the Irish people. Frank´s mother had to lend money to buy food or had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul.¹⁵ St. Vincent de Paul was a society where she got something to eat and sometimes shoes or clothes for her children.

A consequence of that miserably living conditions was, that Frank and many other Irish people had a dream. He dreamed that dream till he could realize it: The dream of America.

"I´d give my teeth to get out, go to America or even England itself."¹⁶

The elder Frank, was the more he thought about how it would be possible to realize that wish.¹⁷ In Frank´s opinion, America was the paradise. There was no river Shannon who killed you and there you would have a good work and earn enough money.¹⁸

Even other people gave Frank the advice to emigrate to America as soon as possible:

"You must get out of this country, boys. Go to America, McCourt. Do you hear me?"¹⁹

To emigrate was not only a dream of the hard 1930s and 40s.

"In der Zeit von 1780 bis 1845 verließen etwa 1,75 Millionen Iren ihre Insel. Allein nach Nordamerika wanderten zwischen 1815 und 1845 durchschnittlich 30.000 Menschen pro Jahr aus, und etwa ebenso viele begaben sich nach Großbritannien,..."²⁰

But the bad weather and the job market situation were not the only reasons that the people did not want to stay in Ireland any more in the 18th and 19th century. It was the great famine between the years 1842 and 1847. The harvest of the potatoes, the most important foodstuff, was destroyed because of a rot.²¹

The situation in the 1930s and 40s was a little bit the same. The people were afraid that something like that could happen again. They spoke of the great famine with a big respect and saw it as the hardest time for Ireland in history

"God help us. You look like one left over from the Famine itself."²²

Frank wanted to emigrate to America, but of course he had no money. He had not even enough to eat.

During the Second World War Frank´s father got the opportunity to work in England, like many other fathers, too. He went to England, and his hole family had the anticipation of the money he would send them. But except one time, Frank´s father never sent a telegramm with money.²³

Frank had to go working. He wanted to flee out of this very miserably living conditions in Ireland and wanted to save money for America.²⁴

"Day and night I dream of America"²⁵

His first job was to read out books for an old nearly blind man.²⁶ After Frank had earned his first money by himself he was very proud and spent it to go to the cinema or to buy fish and chips.²⁷

The next job was on a coal float. But this work was very bad for him, especially for his eyes. Frank had a bad case of conjunctivitis, and the coal dust made this illness worse and worse so that he had to stop it.²⁸

After he had left school, he worked as a telegramm courier, but because of a plot against him he lost this well payed job, too.²⁹

Besides he wrote admonitions for an old lady who sent those to people who had not payed her flat fees. His last job before he emigrated to America was as a magazine courier. There he earned enough money to go to America at the age of 18.³⁰

But the bad weather and not enough food and money were not the only things which infuriated the people and made the living conditions as hard as they were.

In the people´s opinion, it was also the politic´s fault and the fault of the Englishmen and -women, that they had to suffer.

At first relating to the political situation:

"...out of this godforsaken country that fought so long for freedom and look at the state of us, De Valeran in his mansion above in Dublin the dirty oul´ bastard and the rest of the politicians that can go to hell, God forgive me."³¹

Eamon de Valeran was elected Prime Minister of Ireland in 1932.³² In the same year his party "Fianna Fáil" formed the government for the first time.³³

Ireland was not independent of England. In 1919 the parliament demanded the independence of Great Britain. But the independence was not acknowledged and it followed an underground war between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Royal Irish Constabulary.³⁴

Those armed conflicts were the reason for the prejudices of the Irish people towards the Englishmen and -women.³⁵

"So you have to be wary of birds, Francis, birds and Englishmen."³⁶

The history of Ireland causes many different prejudices, and through that a great patriotism was achieved. In his youth and childhood, Frank had to swear his drunken father a thousand times that he would die for Ireland. From a child he learned what patriotism is.

"He still gets Malachy and me out of bed to stand in our shirts promising to die for Ireland. One night he wanted to make the twins promise to die for Ireland but they can´t even talk..."³⁷

Frank´s dad sang songs about patriotism, too. He sang the famous folk songs of Roddy McCorley and Kevin Barry (appendix). Those two men did their bit and died for Ireland.³⁸

Frank had to go dancing in order to learn the old traditional dances of his ancestors.³⁹ That is another kind of patriotism, the "jig" and "reel" are folk dances since the 17th century.⁴⁰

In Ireland, 93% of the population is Catholic.⁴¹ Protestant people are not very liked by most of the others.⁴²

"...a Protestant, already doomed, in hell,..."⁴³

The reasons for that have also historical roots. Great Britain is and was Anglican. The Irish people wanted to be free and independent of that country. In Ireland they are nearly all Catholic in contrast to the Englishmen. They wanted to have nothing to do with Great Britain, Englishmen and Protestants or Anglicans.⁴⁴

On the basis of the strict Catholic system, contraceptives, for example, were not allowed in the 1930s and 40s in Ireland. They were just allowed since 1985 by a decision of the parliament.⁴⁵

As Frank worked as a magazine courier, there was an article about condoms in one of those magazines one time. Because it was forbidden, Frank and the other boys who worked there had to pull out all pages refering to that topic. After that, Frank made the big money by selling those pages, because everyone wanted to read them.⁴⁶

Irelands traditions influences the culture and politics even nowadays. Divorces are just allowed since 1995, and abortions are now forbidden as they were before and would be punished very hard.⁴⁷

Furthermore, the miserable living conditions are recognizable by the situation the McCourts had to reside.

Once they lived in a small flat which had two floors. It was always raining into the basement, and as a result of that they flew upstairs where it was dry. They called the basement "Ireland" and the first floor "Italy".

"It´s cold and wet down in Ireland but we´re up in Italy"⁴⁸

They compared the two situations with prejudices of countries. In Ireland it rains a lot, especially in and around Limerick

"Der Jahresniederschlag kann an der Westküste (Limerick liegt nahe der Westküste [Anm. des Autors]) bis zu 3000 Millimeter erreichen, die Ostküste erhält dagegen nur noch eine Niederschlagsmenge von 700 bis 750 Millimetern."⁴⁹

and Italy is well known as a country where it is hot and sunny most of the time.

The children had to sleep on one mattress altogether because there was no other way. They had not enough blankets and must use their jackets to be covered.⁵⁰

"...we saw the fleas, leaping, jumping, fastened to our flesh."⁵¹

V. End

In my opinion it was right what Frank wrote on the first page on his novel. It were extreme hard times in the 1930s and 1940s of Ireland for the people.

Especially for Frank it was not easy. He was the eldest one of the children in the family and had a big responsibility towards them.

All in all I think that it is right to praise Frank McCourt´s novel "Angela´s Ashes". It is a great memoir, based on his own life.

Because the novel is written from McCourts´ point of view, in the I-form, the reader can understand the situation and living conditions better.

I think it is very great that Frank McCourt wrote a book like that. The reason is, that it is more interesting to learn about the past if it is written in a hole family story than if you have to read scientific books which are very impersonal. The only thing I asked myself was, if it is all true, but with scientific proofs I could answer my question.

VI. End

All in all I think that it is right to praise Frank McCourt´s novel "Angela´s Ashes". It is a great memoir based on his own life.

Because it is written from his point of view in the I-form, the reader can understand the situation and living conditions better.

Especially for Frank it was hard. He was the eldest one of the children in the family and had a big responsibility towards them.

APPENDIX

The two following examples are extracts from songs, Frank´s father sang about patriotism:

Up the narrow street he stepped

Smiling and proud and young,

About the hemp-rope on his neck

The golden ringlets clung,

There´s never a tear in the blue eyes

Both glad and bright are they,

As Roddy McCorley goes to die

On the bridge of Toome today.⁵²

Because he loved the motherland,

Because he loved the green

He goes to meet a martyr´s fate

With proud and joyous mien;

True to the last, oh! true to the last

He treads the upward way;

Young Roddy McCorley goes to die

On the bridge at Toome today.⁵³

LITERATURE LIST

primary literature:

McCOURT, FRANK: Angela´s Ashes, New York 1996

Titel der deutschen Ausgabe: Die Asche meiner Mutter, München 1996

secondary literature:

BOTTIGHEIMER, KARL S.: Geschichte Irlands, Stuttgart [u.a.] 1985

BECKETT J.C.: Geschichte Irlands, Stuttgart 1997

Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie 2000

ELVERT, JÜRGEN: Geschichte Irlands, München 1993

MAURER, MICHAEL: Kleine Geschichte Irlands, Stuttgart 1998

TIEGER, MANFRED P.: Irland, München 1984 [überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage München 1996]

WEGNER, DIRK: Anders reisen Irland, [hrsg. BARTELS, TILL], Hamburg 1999 Der BROCKHAUS in einem Band, 8., vollst. überarb. und aktualisierte Aufl., Leipzig 1998

[...]

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¹ Vgl. a.a.O. Maurer, Micheal: Kleine Geschichte Irlands, S. 219 ff.

² Vgl. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie, Stichwort: Irland, Geschichte und IRA (Irish Rebublican Army)

³ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, blurb

⁴ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 7

⁵ Vgl. Ebd. S. 106, 144, 292

⁶ Vgl. Ebd. S. 7

⁷ Vgl. Ebd. S. 124

⁸ Vgl. Ebd. S. 101

⁹ Vgl. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie Stichwort: Ireland, Verteidigung

¹⁰ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 66f.

¹¹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 83

¹² Vgl. Ebd. S. 179

¹³ Vgl. Ebd. S. 29

¹⁴ Vgl. Ebd. S. 123/S. 156

¹⁵ Vgl. Ebd. S. 143

¹⁶ Vgl. Ebd. S. 91

¹⁷ Vgl. Ebd. S. 228

¹⁸ Vgl. Ebd. S. 297

¹⁹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 419

²⁰ Vgl. a.a.O. Bottigheimer, Karl S.: Geschichte Irlands, S. 138

²¹ Vgl. a.a.O. Bottigheimer, Karl S.: Geschichte Irlands, S. 138 f.

²² Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 452

²³ Vgl. Ebd. S. 358

²⁴ Vgl. Ebd. S. 456

²⁵ Vgl. Ebd. S. 515

²⁶ Vgl. Ebd. S. 246 ff.

²⁷ Vgl. Ebd. S. 250 ff.

²⁸ Vgl. Ebd. S. 323

²⁹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 451 ff./476 ff.

³⁰ Vgl. Ebd. S. 500 ff.

³¹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 461

³² Vgl. a.a.O. Beckett, J.C., Geschichte Irlands, S. 241

³³ Vgl. a.a.O. Bottigheimer, Karl S., Geschichte Irlands, S. 181 f.

³⁴ Vgl. a.a.O. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie Plus 2002, Stichwort: Irland, Geschichte

³⁵ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 289/387

³⁶ Vgl. Ebd. S. 52

³⁷ Vgl. Ebd. S. 53

³⁸ Vgl. Ebd. S. 131

³⁹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 196

⁴⁰ Vgl. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie, Stichwort: Irland, Kultur

⁴¹ Vgl. Ebd., Stichwort: Bevölkerung

⁴² Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 189

⁴³ Vgl. Ebd. S. 476

⁴⁴ Vgl. a.a.O. Microsoft® Encarta® / a.a.O. Der Brockhaus in einem Band, Stichwort: Irland/Großbritannien

⁴⁵ Vgl. a.a.O. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie, Stichwort: Irland, Bevölkerung

⁴⁶ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 507 ff.

⁴⁷ Vgl. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie

⁴⁸ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 335

⁴⁹ Vgl. Microsoft® Encarta® Enzyklopädie, Stichwort: Irland, Klima

⁵⁰ Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 77 f.

⁵¹ Vgl. Ebd. S. 78

⁵² Vgl. McCourt, Frank: Angela´s Ashes, S. 33

⁵³ Vgl. Ebd. S. 50