A hardship that many people have to endure is poverty. The characters in the short stories, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank Mccourt and The Street, by Ann Petry, both experience living in impoverished conditions. In the story The Street, Petry shows the life of a single mother who lives through the struggles of being poor. In another story portraying poverty, Angela’s Ashes, the author uses kids to paint the image of indigence. These kids are burdened with the task of caring for themselves. It is evident that both stories share the theme of living in poverty and it is presented in the events, setting, and characters..
One way, the authors incorporate the theme of struggling to live in poverty is through events. In Angela’s Ashes, the narrator feels
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In Angela’s Ashes, the author uses the harsh winter weather to demonstrate the inconvenience of being poor and trying to survive in different conditions. “My brothers are back in bed playing games under the overcoats but they jump when they see the bread.” It seems that the only warmth that they can find is under their overcoats. Angela’s Ashes was set in the same time period as the great depression, which also negatively impacted the family. The kids focus on fires that they can see from “people 's windows and see how cozy it is in their kitchens with fires glowing,” This is the closest that they are going to get to the warmth radiating from the fires that they desperately wish to have. In The Street, Petry uses the settings to show how much the image of a certain place can affect a mother 's decision. While looking for a home, Lutie Johnson stumbles upon a street with “every scrap of paper (along the street) theater throwaways, announcements of dances and lodge meetings, the heavy waxed paper that loaves of bread had been wrapped in, the thinner waxed paper that had enclosed sandwiches…” The condition of the street represents the low standards that Lutie Johnson has to hold in order to find a home that can house her