Angela’s Ashes: Setting 1 key example

The memoir opens in Brooklyn, where Frank’s Irish immigrant family encounters seemingly endless prejudice and struggles to make ends meet. Even at this early stage it’s clear that Frank’s father is suffering from very severe alcoholism, and his mother has periods of intense depression. Each of these is made worse every time one of their children dies, which happens painfully regularly. Malachy Sr. loses each job he gets after a few weeks because of his drinking, leaving the family destitute until he finds more work. The family lives in tenement housing, poorly maintained and often unsafe low-rise apartment buildings made to house the city’s poor. After the death of Frank’s first sister, baby Margaret, the family returns to Ireland, a “reverse emigration” that shows how desperate their situation truly is.

Back in Ireland things aren’t much better. Malachy Sr. is from Northern Ireland and Angela’s family is from Limerick, and Limerick people don’t take kindly to Malachy’s foreign accent, surname, and “funny manner.” The McCourts leave Belfast and Dublin in quick succession when they don't receive a warm welcome, and they settle in Limerick where Angela's family lives. The memoir is full of the tensions between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the upheaval of the Second World War, and lingering resentment toward English colonizers. When Frank is a young child the narrator doesn’t pay too much attention to the setting around him, because very young children rarely do. As Frank gets older, however, he gains perspective on the inequalities of life in Limerick. His own ramshackle house in the Lanes, a very poor area of the city, is held up against the rich, golden settings of churches and the comparatively plush interiors of the houses of the better-off.