Literary Analysis Of Angela's Ashes And The Street

In describing his atrocious childhood, Frank McCourt writes, “Two small sons starved to death.” In the novel, Angela's Ashes, McCourt portrays his life with an alcoholic father and depressed mother. McCourt uses two of several writing techniques: diction and imagery, to show the hardships of being Irish, Catholic, and poor. Angela’s Ashes is a moving and impassioned testimony of McCourt's life from childhood into early adulthood.

Their most obvious similarity is that both the narrator and the main character are driving to California from New York. They also have the same last name, Adams. Last, they both end up finding out that they were dead the whole time.

The two stories were alike in the fact that both authors lost their parents at a very young age. Since they lost their parents at a young age, they were both raised by their grandparents. Both stories also begin with a safe arrival to a new country. Both also said the journey to the new country was a two month long trip. And lastly, the the refugees and the pilgrims traveled to a completely different continents and had to adapt to new cultures. These are all the similarities between the two stories.

In, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, by Joyce Carol Oates and “Eveline”, by James Joyce, two characters prove to be completely different but share few similarities as well. In both short stories, the main characters, Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” and Eveline in “Eveline”, are both teenage girls who face problems at home. Connie and Eveline who are both caught up in their own cultures in different times are Both girls seem like they have it all going for them but what they conclusively share in common is their final decision bringing them to their downfall. The theme in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” and “Eveline,” possess and unyielding insecurity which stems from their family lives. Everything had two sides to it, one for one home and one for the other. Each of the girl 's home lives was oppressive and restraining. Making them both have to grow up faster.

The similarity and connection existing between the two stories is the point of view in the two essays. The stories are both written in the first person perspective and that

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.

While each story had their contrasting elements, the base theme of each was remarkably similar; Both of the authors manipulate the theme of motherhood to examine the ideas of slavery, home and forgiveness during two very different time periods.

The stories we read in class had a lot of distinct similarities in each story. One similarity I saw was; all the stories introduced their settings in the beginning. Also, all the stories explain some truths about the world we live in. For example, in The Lottery, this story shows the danger of blindly following traditions of the community was so used to playing the lottery, that it has become a normal habit for them not realizing the damage this “lottery” is causing them and the people who has to lose their life for it. Another example, in The Lottery, is when Mrs. Delacroix turned against her good friend Tessie by picking up the largest stone to kill her which shows that there are certain friends you may have and when certain situations happens, their true colors will show and they may not have been a true friend to begin with. Also, in Young Goodman Brown, along his spiritual journey he encountered people he knew already, but then those people started to act the total opposite of what Goodman thought of his friends. This shows that in life, not everything is what it seems, no matter how you see it. Another example is

The stories bear minor similarities and differences that the setting influences the plot development by era and place, main characters backgrounds, and environment /time frame of stories.

Theme is the subject of talk, a topic, or morals that the author is trying to get across to the readers. When reading an excerpt, the theme is not directly stated in the text, so you must dig deeper into the context to understand the morals the author is trying to portray. In both Angela's Ashes and The Street, we can detect a similar theme of struggling to get through life’s obstacles. When reading the two different stories, we can further pick out the theme by using character, events, and the setting.

A very important similarity between the stories, is that they both are in the view point of a Union soldier in the nineteenth century, during the civil war. The similarities between these two books combine the ideals of battle and war, also the resemblances show how alike the two protagonists of the stories are.

The settings in the two stories are similar in the way that they both take place in a small town with a sense of poverty. The adults are portrayed as authoritative and the narrators feel trapped.

According to the ACS, American Community Survey, interracial marriage has gone up 7.9% in the last 28 years (Becker). Imagine trying to get married to a black male or female during the civil rights era and how hard that would have been for a family from that time. That statistic was chosen because it really shows how people and new ideas were oppressed by old ways and comfortable culture. Antigone starts out with her two brothers fighting against each other in a war. They ended up both killing each other.

"I can't spend my life running around" (McCourt 10). In "The Street" and "Angela's Ashes", the main characters who are poverty stricken, show perseverance through their actions. The author reveal the theme through the characters, events, and settings of the stories. In “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt, the main character steals to provide for the needs of his family. In “The Street” by Ann Petry, a single mother, Lutie Johnson, is out in the elements trying to find a home for her family. In both “The Street” and “Angela’s Ashes”, the authors show the theme of when poverty occurs in a daily life, perseverance shines through of the main characters in each story by the use of characters, events, and settings.

“Is there, then an evil that is innate, that is the little piece of monster in all of us.” (Cusatis). Every person has two sides, no one is completely good or completely evil. In the East of Eden, John Steinbeck uses a biblical metaphor to illustrate the innate good and evil that humans encounter. The novel includes several characters that are purely evil or do evil deeds. The Trask family is directly correlated to the Garden of Eden and other biblical narratives. “Steinbeck puts more into his stories than Genesis 4” (Fontenrose). Steinbeck illustrates the concepts of good and evil, family, and love to describe the frailties of the human experience.