Angela's Ashes - Extra Credit

You’re walking down the street. Everyone who walks by says “Hey Yank,” as though just because you’re an American means you like to be only considered it. You get to school, and the teacher asks you a question. Unfortunately you don’t know the answer, he just replies, “That’s ‘cuz you’re a Yank.” Whatever you do that’s all you’ll be known as: the Yank. In Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt that’s what Frank had to live with everyday growing up in Limerick Ireland in the nineteen twenties. Irishmen discriminated against other cultures to create a class structure impossible to break.
Frank McCourt grew in a world where no religion was accepted but Catholic. None other was worthy of God’s time nor love, for instance the Protestants. “I feel sorry for the beautiful Protestant girls, they’re doomed. That’s what the priest tells us. Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Outside the Catholic Church there is nothing but doom.”(172) Here he notices how the priests, who he should be looking up to, are discriminating against different cultures. They even teach the young easily persuaded kids to believe this too. Earlier in the book this is brought up again while standing in line for food coupons. People nicknamed soupers, are turned away because their ancestors ate soup from the Protestants during the Great Famine instead of starving to death. “It’s a terrible thing to be a souper because you’re doomed forever in the souper part of hell.” (133) This shows how no matter what these families were to do their fates can’t be changed, how the stereotypes set up are unchangeable.
The Jesuit’s unchangeable stereotype is a bit different. According to page 272 and 244 the Jesuits wear fancy uniforms, fresh haircuts, and a cocky presence. Their houses have warm fire places, food in the cupboard, and money in their pockets. Even at ten years old the Catholics and Jesuits don’t get along because of where they come from, something kids shouldn’t be worried about. Unfortunately both parties know this won’t change because the class structure is so hard to break. “We know they’re the ones who will go to university, take over the family business, run the government, and run the world. We’ll be the messenger boys on bicycles who deliver their groceries or we’ll go to England to work on building sites. Our sisters will mind their children and scrub their floors unless they go off to England too. We know that. We’re ashamed…” Here Frank sees how the class structure built up by earlier generations isn’t going to change easily. How maybe it will never change. How his fate is decided for him just by his family.
His family feels this discrimination too. His father, Malachy McCourt Is from Northern Ireland a land Limerick thinks isn’t worth a job in town. He comes to the interview in a suit, yet when the men hear his Northern accent they always take a Limerick-born citizen instead. Even if he is the most qualified man, most hard-working they don’t care. But don’t feel too bad for him. His wife suggested he hid is accent, to sound more like a southerner. “He says, he’ll never sink that low and the greatest sorrow of his life is that his sons are now afflicted with the Limerick accent.” This discrimination is thrown back and forth between the two sides of Ireland even though it’s a couple hundred miles. This is a vicious never ending cycle.
Many people would say this never ending discrimination occurred everywhere in the nineteen twenties. I disagree. When Frank McCourt lived in America before Ireland he had a neighbor Freddie Leibowitz who was Jewish. Besides the religion difference there are many small things, like Freddie’s father is called Papa instead of Frank’s Dad. When they went to their house Mrs. Leibowitz made food like Challah (what Frank called twisted bread) and soup, foods new to the Irish Americans. Frank tried to say Challah but Mrs. Leibowitz just shook her head, “Oy, you Irish. You’ll live forever but you’ll never say Challah like a Chew.” This shows how her accent is different and how different the foods are. Still once Frank’s younger sister, Margaret dies Mrs. Leibowitz is ready with her Challah, soup and diapers to watch over the kids while the dad drinks and Frank’s mother is depressed in her bed. This shows how in America even the most opposite of people still help each other out.
Seventeen years of age Frank McCourt did it. He was no longer the Yank, but he was Frank who made it out of Limerick Ireland and back to America where he belonged. Back to neighbors who didn’t care what religion he had, what accent he had, or how he pronounced Challah. He was away from it all. He was away from the Irishmen who discriminated against other cultures creating that awful class structure. Finally, someone had beaten the structure.