Originally, I was a little bit disappointed for I was not assigned to read Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but was assigned to read Angela's Ashes. When I got the book and saw its cover, that was a brownish photograph of a kid leaning on a wall on the sidewalk, having a pair of dirty feet and smiling, I did not feel anything significant. Well, it made sense, since I had not read it. Now, after I finished reading this book, I can tell you that the book cover did reveal something, something happened during that little kid's poor childhood, something that was not much about misery, but was the joy of being naive during a hard time.
Angela's Ashes, a memoir written by Frank McCourt, was about the hard time that he and his family went through, the poor living for which they struggled and, most importantly, how his and his brothers' "miserable Irish Catholic childhood" (p.11) looked and sounded like a joyful time in an amusement park. McCourt's story began in America. Then, he and his family went to Ireland, the motherland of his parents, and lived a poor life. Though there were so many terrible things happened to him and his family, for instance, having an alcoholic father, being looked down on by others and the loss of very close relatives, McCourt and his brothers filled the hard time with much fun, excitement, and joy.
I do not mean to offend anybody, but McCourt's father was a terrrible father. How terrible was he? Well, he was obsessed with something.
B-E-E-R.
It was the father's all-time favourite. He was drunk when he and Angela, his wife, went to register McCourt's birth and gave their son an extraordinary name--Male. When Male was baptized, his father then went to have a drink. Throughout the story, he drank and drank and drank, being faithful to his old bad habit. Even after three of his children were dead, which I think that the insensitivity of the father was part of the cause, the father was still not "awake." As a faithful beer addict, he gave in to his costly temptations again and again which made him almost donate all his money to the bar and merely left some shillings and pennies to his dearest family. He lost his jobs for so many times because he was drunk and was late for work next morning. He deserved it, but his wife and children did not deserve having him as the husband and the father. Besides, he did not deserve to have this family, since he paid not much attention to their needs and showed not much affection to them. That was it, the father was a terrible man.
I am amazed about the author's astonishing ability to remember clearly what had happened to him and his family in those days. I believe that it must have taken him so much time to recollect all those incidents and to write them down. I guess that the author's experience of writing Angela's Ashes would be really fascinating, as he had to go through all the things he and his family experienced again. He had to think about all those days he spent with his parents, his brothers, his relatives, and his friends in the old houses, the streets, and the school. Nowadays, the new scientific technology enables us to record things and to have things "remained." We have camera, video camera and recorder, and cassette tape recorder. Also, the ease of life seems to make people become forgetful. Unlike McCourt, I can only remember some pictures of my childhood. They are not in sequences, but separated. They are not in motion, but still. Maybe it is too difficult for a person to erase the memory of such hard times, such overwhelming times.
The most essential thing that I have learned from this memoir is the importance of transforming hard time into happy time. Of course, we cannot expect to have perfect lives in which hard times do not exist. However, we should bear in mind that we can still make a difference when we are having hard times. It is all right for us to feel sad or depressed during hard times. No one is Superman and no one should be, except the God. However, it is always better to fight on and to go straight ahead to meet the storm rather than just sighing and doing nothing but letting the so-called fate to take over us. Happiness does not just come in between us and does not necessarily come with wealth, fame, and power. It comes when people learn to feel contented about what they have, to cherish the love of their parents and friends, and to have artless, but not foolish, minds and kind hearts. Yes, it is always easy to say it than to actually do it, but Angela, who was McCourt's mother, did it. She did it. She was certainly one of the most miserable persons in the memoir, having not just one but three of her children died. They were her dearest babies. However, she did not give up. She struggled to survive and to raise her children, even though her husband was insensitive to her and the family's needs and she was looked down by others. Angela showed us what strength can human beings have, what will-power can enable a person to struggle through hard times, to fight back, and to challenge one's destiny and what love means in a woman's heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment