McCourt's Angela's Ashes

Blog 3

McCourt is brilliant with his portrayal of varying accents and dialects. I could hear everyone as if they were speaking next to me, from Mrs. Leibowitz to the Italian man and even McCourt himself as the narrator. It was nice hearing the Irish rhythms and accents again, even in reading words. I was able to tolerate the misspelled words because I’ve heard them used before and it helped me re-hear them. Having been to Ireland, I could alter the phonetics of a word to shift it into the Irish accent. And because I was in Limerick and had Limerick housemates, I could actually hear them occasionally, especially when the H sound wasn’t used, like saying tree instead of three. I’m sure that listening to McCourt read his story in an audiobook enhances the reading further because he’s then both the reader and the narrator in the story.

I noticed a running theme underneath other universal themes of hunger, being poor, an addicted parent, mental growth, and so on. There was a definite concept of possessions. This could be because McCourt didn’t have much and so he grabbed what he could, even if it was stories and songs that his father would “give” him and his friends would “steal.” A story of Cuchulain was his, a song about kisses belonged to his mother, etc. Afterward, this concept of possessions shifted from verbal gifts to food and shoes.

The close perspective of the child narrator made me become like a child again. Even as I write this, I want to use present tense instead of past. I started looking at the adult characters through the eyes of a child, and placed myself in the situations with McCourt to compare how I would’ve acted or reacted, how I would’ve managed the same events and situations. I experienced a lot of consternation reading how the adults treated the boys, and recalled that it was a universal treatment of children between certain ages. I also began to remember how I used to think and speak as a child, too. He masterfully depicts a child’s voice, and it’s more believable knowing he was listening to his granddaughter’s voice before he started writing his memoirs.

I chose to write about a Christmas event where my grandfather came to visit. My family set up a scene that made it look as if Santa Claus trailed tinsel from the tree to the back door. I swore that the snow on the deck was disturbed, and my grandfather told me about how Santa stepped on his hand at night and apologized. I found the present tense hard to write in, much less remain in. I also started commenting not just on my family’s traditions during Christmas, but the relationship between my grandparents. My grandmother lived with me as a nanny, and my grandfather lived in Angola, New York, for his work. I didn’t realize until I started writing the scene that their “separation” was peculiar and probably took a toll on them. If I hadn’t told the story, I probably wouldn’t have considered the situation for at least another few years.