Angela's Ashes Poverty Essay

Grace Donnelly Professor Davis ENGL 1213 29 April 2024 The Futile Fight Against Poverty The battle of poverty is one of the greatest conflicts in the world. In every era, the fight to stay above the poverty line is insurmountable. Worsened further by the aftermath of the Great Depression, poverty in the early twentieth century is exposed and represented throughout the entirety of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. Cyclic issues of poverty are prominent throughout McCourt’s life, manifesting in many ways throughout his adolescence. In Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the fight to stay above the poverty line is sabotaged by many regressors such as religious hypocrisy and oppression, stereotypes, and cultural normality. Throughout Angela’s Ashes, the ideas and

As explained in the article “The One Way Out: Limerick and Angela’s Ashes”, author Fred Miller Robinson states that “Frank McCourt does not remember Limerick as either an actual or emotional place or origin, an endearing community, a fatherland or motherland, a source or locus of value, a home. This has nothing to do with the fact that his childhood there was, as he announces on the first page, “miserable”, since misery can be transformed by the memoirist into value; nostalgia need not be geared to the worth of its object.” (Robinson 2). To conclude, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the fight against poverty is subverted by many factors such as religious hypocrisy and oppression, stereotypes, and cultural normality. Attempts to break the poverty cycle have been proven futile due to the systemic issues surrounding it. These problems are not only applicable to Frank McCourt and his family, but also to many other Irish citizens and the impoverished worldwide. The fundamental issue of poverty is a cyclical obstacle polluting many lives. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is a prime example of the harsh realities of systemic