Angela's Ashes Character Analysis

Kelly Lloyd April 24, 2013
Irish Lit – Angela’s Ashes Final Essay Bouchard 2 Frank McCourt’s memoir, Angela’s Ashes, depicts to role of the family in times of hardship and great desperation. Despite the fact that young Frankie’s family, who lives in Ireland half a world away from his home in New York, has been torn for several years, we see the McCourts turn to them in their time of need. By leaving New York and returning to Ireland, the McCourts placed themselves in an even more financially depressed state; though not without struggle, they were able to
Further, while Aunt Aggie obviously never assumes the role as the mother of Frank and his siblings, inhabit maternal qualities and roles. When Eugene and Oliver, Frankie’s younger twin brothers, die of pneumonia she is there to help prepare for the funerals. On a separate occasion, Aunt Aggie takes the McCourt children under her roof and cares for them while their mother was being hospitalized for pneumonia. Prior to living with Aunt Aggie, the McCourt boys and their mother were so plagued with poverty and hunger that the children had been forced to steal bread, lemonade, marmalade, and fuel from wealthier families just to survive. Aunt Aggie’s house was a place where they could always be fed, though they were not indulging in the ham sandwiches and tomatoes, those were only for Aggie and Uncle Pa; instead, Frankie and his younger brothers were given thinly sliced bread and tea. Though Aunt Aggie took her sister’s sons under her wing- housing them, feeding them, clothing them- in a desperate time of need, the way she treated these boys was at times traumatic. Aggie often abuses the children both verbally and physically. She losses her temper and ends up screaming at them, tormenting them, calling Frankie “Scabby eyes” and telling him “[You’re] the spitting image of your father, [you have] the odd manner…” and so on (Page 247). She often beats them, forces them to stand outside naked, cold, and wet, makes them to scrub their bodies until their skin is raw. At one point, Frankie becomes so miserable that he tries to give himself pneumonia so that he can escape Aunt Aggie and live in the hospital. Malachy runs away after being beaten for asking for bread, to which Aggie responded “Well, I suppose he ran away. Good riddance. If he was hungry he’d be here. Let him find comfort in a ditch.”(Page