Jaynie Duran
Mrs. Esparza
AP Language Period 5
10 March 2023 Rhetorical Devices in Angela’s Ashes
The author, Frank Mcourt uses rhetorical devices such as symbols, repetition, point-of-view, and themes to help illustrate the book's purpose, which is to highlight significant life events that he experienced when he was younger that helped him develop to the man he became later on in life. A memoir called “Angela's Ashes” discusses Frank’s early experiences with poverty during the Great Depression, his parents' drug and alcoholism addiction, Catholic beliefs system, and lower class struggles that he had to face when he was younger.
In the title “Angela's Ashes'' the word ashes symbolizes lack of hope and life destruction.
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In chapter 1, it states, “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." Frank keeps repeating the word “miserable” to describe how bad his child really was and says he doesn’t know how he survived considering he had no food most days, his siblings died, his father was an alcoholic, his mother was depressed, barely had any clothes, and he had to move to a whole other country at a young age that was just as bad as America was at the time. Throughout the book, repetition is used everytime Frank’s father wouldn’t bring his wages home. It states, “ There's a war on and there's nothing but jobs in England. You drank the money, didn't you? You drank the money, Dad. You drank the money, Dad. You drank the money, Dad”. Frank’s father had no self-control when it came to alcohol and that addiction made life so much harder for Frank and his family because they depended on his income but he constantly would drink than bring food for his family. This left the family to starve for days and have money for rent. Repetition impacts the purpose of the book because it emphasizes horrible events that happened in Frank's life as a child growing up and showing lower class struggles throughout the