Angelas Ashes Essay

"Stay strong things will get better, it might be stormy now, but it can't rain forever". Sometimes in life you are given something that makes you say "what" and "what am I supposed to do now"? But you can get through it. Life is full of obstacles and people always find ways through it. This lesson is found everywhere, even in books. This lesson is found in, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson. The books about a young girl named Mattie and her family that goes through the fever of 1793. Through the fever they had a lot of different obstacles but they got through them together. One of the themes I found in this book is "when obstacles come upon your life you can get through them" this is showed by the character Mattie and Grandfather.

Imagine: A young boy scavenges for food to provide for his impoverished family which was composed of his ill mother and starving siblings or a homeless, single mom desperatley seeking for shelter. These synopses from "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt and "The Street" by Ann Petry share a common theme: perseverance through hardships. In "Angela's Ashes," a memoir by Frank McCourt, he stells about the harships he endured through his childhood, such as, struggling to assist his family in the midst of poverty by stealing food to provide for them. Futhermore, in "The Street," a novel by Ann Petry, tells the story of young Lutie Johnson, a homeless single mom who is seeking shelter for herself and her children. In these two excerpts, the authors use the characters, settings, and events to develop the theme, which I've identified as perseverance through hardships.

Our Life is a matter of choices. Live well and have faith and it will never go wrong. Our lives can be full of crazy ups and downs that shape our views on how life should be lived. With a similar ideology, author Flannery O’Connor’s depicts her own life struggles using different aspects and details throughout her novels and short stories. O’Connor lived by the basis that life must go on no matter the hardships. In her novels she represented various characters who made wrong choices and due to those choices suffered extreme negative consequences. Despite her struggles, O’Connor made the choice to continue on in her life yet many of her novels contradicted that same idea by having characters in her novels and short stories suffer consequences for making the wrong choices. Because the

“In awhile there are voices downstairs and there is talk of tea, sherry, lemonade, buns, and isn’t that child the loveliest little fella in the world, little Alphie, foreign name but still an’ all still an’ all not a sound outta him the whole time he’s that good-natured God bless him sure he’ll live forever with the sweetness that’s in him the little dope spittin’ image of his mother his father his grandma his little brothers dead an’ gone”(182).

Whether it’s trying to cope with living in poverty, being different from others, or questioning fate; all internal battles that these authors are writing about in their essays. In the essay ‘Shame’ by Dick Gregory, he explains what he must do since he is living in poverty. Nevertheless, his family doesn’t have much money he goes to school on an empty stomach, which makes him fidgety in class. He doesn’t have hardly any food at home so, he does anything he can to eat something, even if it’s not meant for eating, “Paste doesn’t taste too bad when you’re hungry.” (Gregory 165). In another essay ‘White Lies’ by Erin Murphy, the internal battle that Connie, the new girl, has, is being different from others. “Connie is albino…Only her eyelids had color”. (Murphy 154). Nobody looks like Connie and people make fun of her for it. She doesn’t look the same as her family members. She is beside herself with her appearance. The teacher doesn’t stop the bullying either. Everyday Connie hears the same

You are given two short stories, one is "Angela's Ashes" and the other, "The Street". After reading the two it is easy to contrast them even you skimmed over the text. That statement just further supports the idea that if you read the stories in depth you will find the theme is more alike than you would expect. This is just one example of similar themes, the external conflicts of the two may be different, but the message behind the two is as close to the same as you can get. In this case the message behind both is; to persevere even when life gets you down to the point of giving up. To prove this theme, the use of characters, setting, and events are used.

It does not matter how many times life knocks someone down, it matters whether or not they recover. As Winston Churchill once announced, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Life may cause numerous troubles, although, overcoming inadequate decisions can correct your fate. The Other Wes Moore, written by Wes Moore, is an exquisite example of how one poor decision does not need to determine one’s fate, and an individual has the power to metamorphose their fate. In addition, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a superior illustration of how confronting one’s mistakes and choosing to rectify them. The Other Wes Moore and The Scarlet Letter both portray the theme rising above challenges with the use of literary devices.

     The title of this book is Angela’s Ashes. The title doesn’t make a lot of sense because the story about Angela’s cremation and her lost ashes is found in part two of the book. However, ashes do appear in the book in relation to Angela. An example of this would be the ashes from Angela’s Woodbine cigarettes. And another example would be Angela sitting next to the ashes from the fireplace during hard times.

Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is a powerful and emotional memoir of his life from childhood through early adulthood. This book is a wonderfully inspired piece of work that emotionally attaches the reader through McCourt’s life experiences. Its effectiveness is primarily due to McCourt’s evolving ‘innocent-eye’ narrative technique. He allows the reader to experience his own life in a changeable form. Through this unique story telling technique, the reader is able to watch Frank grow and evolve. Between the ages of four, eleven and fourteen changes in his writing can be easily identified. It is evident that the written text, McCourt’s thoughts, and the resultant relationship with the reader evolve and

Frank and his family had it hard, harder than other families because of the amount of children they had. Another big problem was drinking. People would get there paycheck and immediately go to the neighborhood pub and get drunk. It was usually the husband that would do this, which would leave the rest of the family wondering where there husband or father is and they'd be worried. When mom would ask where the money is they'd say the "drank away" the money leaving the family without money, food, and necessities. As many of you know we get pubs from Ireland as well as the beer

Upon receiving the Nobel Prize for his excellence in writing, William Faulkner expresses his dismay towards the writers of the day and laid out what he terms “the writer’s duty.” In his acceptance speech, Faulkner is disheartened by the fact that young writers continue to discuss “the end of man” in their work. Faulkner advocates that authors must make all efforts to “help man endure by lifting his heart.” Because man leads a difficult life, writers are obligated to use their work to uplift and inspire the reader’s sprit. In his memoir, Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt raises the reader’s spirits by illustrating that although one may have a reprobate nature,

Adversity can be seen in many different ways. Some people look at adversity as a learning experience, while others view adversity as a situation marked with misfortune. When a person is faced with adversity, rather than viewing it as something to hate, they should see it as a opportunity to grow. In the stories by Doris Lessing, W.D Wetherell and Alice Walker, they all show different types of challenges each character had to over come and their journey to do so. These stories all shared similar outcomes, they demonstrate how each character used an obstacle they were faced with, and turned it into a beneficial experience and how it shaped them into the person they are today.

The novel, “Counting by 7’s” by Holly Goldberg Sloan mentions a lot about hard times. The main theme of the novel is, when one goes through lots of grief, they have the ability to overcome it and

Frank McCourt would have not written the story he did if it were not for the sad past he had gone through. His despairing childhood gave him the opportunity to write his novel. Being poor made Frank realize that he wanted more to life than just living in poverty. He wanted to succeed and make something of himself. He wanted all the great opportunities and rights he did not have growing up. As a child, he devoured each word he read from a book as if it were his last. Reading and

Everyone experiences adversity. Challenges that everyday people experience can potentially shape, improve, or destroy one's sense of self and personality. Through all these hardships and seemingly impenetrable obstacles, the most pertinent component of one's ability to overcome can only be shown in actions taken despite the odds. People have one of two options; to let those obstacles overwhelm them and keep them from pursuing all that they were destined to accomplish, or to march forward, fight harder and push past the seemingly impossible circumstances to become greater than they ever expected to be, but until they take the step that enables them to be successful -- they are stranded. All of our actions, mistakes, successes, and behaviors shape our person and what we can or cannot become, but what will always matter is our individual decisions and actions not those of the people around us because at the end of the day, we are the ones who have to deal with ourselves.