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Thinking Anew — If the Church is our mother. Sign In. Don't have an account? Malachy tells his son how the English at one time closed the schools and denied the Irish an education. The Irish subverted their efforts by teaching in the ditches. His father also advises Frank to return to America where he will get a good job.
At the beginning of chapter nine, Angela says, "I'm worn out. That's the end of it. No more children" This means no more sex and Malachy denounces her for neglecting "her wifely duties" The second World War is underway and many men have gone off to England to work in munitions factories and send home their wages to their families.
Malachy also leaves for England for work and the McCourts see him off at the train station. They look forward to the money he will send and begin to dream of food. In particular they are to have one egg each a week and finally get electricity.
The money never arrives. Though desperate, Angela resists the available public assistance from the Dispensary because it is considered more shameful than the dole. Because she is incapable of supporting her children, she lives in fear of losing them. Frank develops pink eye and his Grandma , who believes his constant reading is the cause, berates him.
Frank, at this point hardly able to see, winds up in the hospital again where he meets his old friends the janitor Seamus and old Mr. Seamus reads poetry to Frank until he too leaves to work in England and Mr. Timoney advises him to keep reading. After a month Frank returns home.
Gossip spreads that Malachy has "gone mad" with drinking in England and Angela is forced to attempt to get assistance from the Dispensary. Once there, a sanctimonious official named Mr. Kane accuses her of claiming aid her family does not deserve because they have a father working in England. She eventually secures the assistance, but only after shaming her family. In the Roman Catholic Church, Confirmation is a sacrament performed by a bishop and received by children who are deemed old enough to reaffirm, or confirm, the decision made for them at Baptism to become part of the Church.
Once more, McCourt presents sacred and profane side by side: as he prepares to be confirmed he simultaneously spies on naked girls. His very curiosity is a grave sin. This apparent distinction of sexuality and religion becomes ironic given that meanwhile Malachy tells Angela that she is not a good Catholic when she ends their sexual relationship. This confusing orientation toward sexuality instills more guilt in Frank than it does clarity.
Frank McCourt the teacher also emerges in this section, delivering a lecture on Irish history, especially the Irish famine and the importance of Education.
The mothers of Ireland are always the enemies of the first pint. My own mother tried to kill my father with a frying pan when he took me for the first pint" Sports Hero-Rite of Passage. I'm floating over the whole field till the Red Hearts of Limerick clap me on the back and tell me that was a great goal, Frankie" Chapter XII 12 Pages In chapter 12 Angela and the boys experience one loss after another.
Malachy's Last Christmas. Dad watches us a moment eating our chocolates. He lifts the latch, goes out the door and pulls it shut" Frank gets a nut. Socks and Shoes and Shirts. I wear it day in day out. It's the shirt for football, for climbing walls, for robbing orchards.
I go to Mass and the Confraternity in that shirt and people sniff the air and move away. If Mam gets a docket for a new one at the St. Vincent de Paul, the old shirt is promoted to a towel and hangs damp on the chair for months or Mam might use bits of it to patch other shirts. She might even cut it up and let Aplhie wear it a while before it winds up on the floor pushed against the bottom of the door to block the rain from the lane" Angela and Michael take in strangers and puppies and old men.
He brings home stray dogs and old men. You never know when you'll find a dog in the bed with him. There are dogs with sores, dogs with no ears, no tails Mam says that dog has to go tomorrow and Michael cries all night and cries worse in the morning when he finds the dog dead in the bed beside him In the end she tells Michael, No more old men.
One of them left us with lice and were plagued. The lice are disgusting, worse than rats We all agree there will be no more stray women and children, dogs and old men. We don't want any more diseases and infections. Michael cries. The Radio. The family get Evicted from Roden Lane.
He says, Great God in heaven, where's the other room? Grandma says, What room? I rented ye two rooms up here and one is gone. Where is that room? Mam says, What room? There were two rooms up here and now there's one. And what happend to the wall? There was a wall. Now there's no wall. I distinctly remember a wall because I distinctly remember a room.
Now where is that wall? Mam turns to us. Do any of ye remember a wall? Michael pulls at her hand. Is that the wall we burned in the fire? The rent man says, Out missus, I'm puttin' ye out. One week from today" Laman's House.
Angela's Family Disappears. The Lives of the Saints. The saints in these books are different. There are stories about virgins, martyrs, virgin martyrs and they're worse than any horror film at the Lyric Cinema I have to look in the dictionary to find out what a virgin is Now I have to look up inviolate chastity My favorite is St. Christina the Astonishing who takes ages to die. The judge says, Cut off her breast, and when they do she throws it at him and he goes deaf dumb and blind They try to kill her with arrows but they just bounce off her and kill the soldiers who shot them.
They try to boil her in oil but she rocks in the vat and takes a nap for herself. Then the judges get fed up and have her head cut off and that does the job" He must not fall into the messenger boy trap. That leads nowhere.
Take him up to the Christian Brothers , tell them I sent you, tell them he is a bright boy and ought to be going secondary school and beyond that university" Go to America, McCourt.
Do you hear me? Frank wants to join the French Foreign Legion. They're bad enough here in Limerick. In the Sahara they'll fester and rot and fall out of your head. How old are you? Go home to your mother" Frank and the Excitement. It's a sin when you're wide awake and going at yourself the ways the boys talked about it in Leamy's Schoolyard" I go to confession and they hiss that I'm not in a proper spirit of repentance, that if I were I'd give up this hideous sin" I--I--I did dirty things, Father.
Ah, my child, was that with yourself or with another or with some class of beast? Some class of beast? I never heard of a sin like that before. The priest must be from the country and if he is he's opening up a new worlds for me" Borrowing a bicycle. Angela sleeps with Laman. Angela Willl do anything for her children. Chapter XIV 14 Pages Waiting for 14th birthday so he can get a job and "be a man". Frank spends most of his summer reading about sex and the human body and masturbating.
Frank has run away to his Uncle Ab Sheehan's. I'll give him an egg and take him to the Lyric Cinema I'll get money some day for a ouse or a flat with electric lights and a lavatory adn beds with sheets blankets pillows like the rest of te world I'll buy proper clothes for the whole family so our arses won't be hanging out of our pants and we won't have theshame" Frank's Summer.
I climb to the very top of the castle where there once was a tower and there in full view of Ireland I interfere with myself and spurt all over Carrigogunnell and fields below" I'm not stealing, I'm borrowing, and that's not a mortal sin" Frank feels he is a great sinner, suffers from guilt.
Climbing to great heigths and going at yourself before all of Ireland is surely worse thatn doing it in a private place with yourself" Besides, I stood on top of a castle this morning and committed a sin far worse than stealing bread and milk and if you commit one sin you might as well commit a few more because you get the same sentence in hell.
One sin, eternity. A dozen sins, eternity" Even if you hate apples you hve to rob orchards" Frank, The Library and Sex. Frank and Grandma's Clothes-Sad Tone. You're not supposed to wear your Grandmother's old dress when she's dead and you're a boy but what does it matter if it keeps you warm and you're in bed unde the blankets where no one will ever know" Chapter XV 15 Pages Chapter 15 is about Rites of Passage:.
Chapter 15 is also about Hunger. Frank's 14th Birthday. What kind of work would that be now? Telegram boy, miss. The thin one cackles, Oh God, I thought you were here to clean the lavatories. Your job starts Monday. Go away and wash yourself and come back then.
The telegram boys along the wall are laughing. I don't know why but I feel my face turning hot Aunt Aggie is Kind. Carbolic soap. They smell like dead pigeons and you're making a laughingstock of the whole family.
She takes me to Roche's Stores and buys me a shirt, a gansey, a pair of short pants, two pairs of stockings and a pair of summer shoes on sale. She give me two shillings to have tea and a bun for my birthday..
A telegram for the Clohessey's. I seen her in the Dispensary and she looks worse than my Dennis did in the bed. You have to mind your poor mother. You look desperate, too, Frankie with them two red eyes starin' outa your head. Here's a little tip for you.
Buy yourself a sweet" Frank's first wages-Rite of Passage-Hunger for a better life. I'm fourteen now and if I save something every week surely I should be able to go to America by the time I'm twenty" The best people for tips are widows, Protesant ministers' wives and the poor in general The Irishmen working in England send their telegram money order on Friday nights and all day Saturday and that's when we get the good tips.
If you give a small child a telegram for his mother he's the hero of the family" Deliver the telegram and that's all. O'Connell and Miss Barry at the post office tell us every day our job is to deliver telegrams and nothing else They don't care if people are dying in the bed, if people are legless, lunatic or crawling on the floor. We are to deliver the telegram and that's all" The Family is Reunited. Theresa Carmody. She's seventeen and she'll never see eighteen.
Theresa knows there's little time left and that makes them made for love and romance and everything Theresa Carmody has red hair. She had green eyes like the fields beyond Limerick.
Her cheeks are bright pink and her skin is fierce white I don't know what's happening to me if I'm killing myself catching consumption from her mouth I'm riding to heaven I'm falling off a cliff and if this is a sin I don't give a fiddler's fart For weeks after that I deliver the telegram. Sometimes we have the excitement of the sofa but there are days she has the cough and you can see the weakness on her I love Theresa.
I love her as mush as you love any bird or beast or fish and will you God take the consumption away and I promise I'll never go near her again I can see the black crepe wreath on the door I know now she is in hell and all because of me I cycle back down to the Franciscan church to beg for the repose of Theresa's soul I can't understand the feelings going through me but I know that with all the people who died in my family and all the people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I never will again" Chapter XVI 16 Pages He is torn up with guilt about the sex he has had with Theresa Carmody, but feels once he gets to America a nice American priest will forgive him.
Frank also hungers for a better job. He is willing to do any kind of work to save the money he needs to go to America. Frank Gets Fired. Frank is filled with guilt. I feel the sin growing in me like an abscess I'm worn out from being the worst sinner in Limerick I still have the sin in me, the abscess, and I hope it doesn't kill me entirely before I see the American priest" Brigid Finucane.
I'm sorry for their troubles but there's no other way for me to save the money for America" Postal Exam. Sixteen years of age an' talking about the pension If you pass the exam you'll marry a Brigid and have five little Catholics You'll be dead in your head before you're thirty and dried in your ballocks the year before. Make up your own bloody mind and the hell with the safeshots and the begrudgers I'll be in Limerick forever, growing roses with my head dead and ballocks all dried up" Frank's New Job.
Frank is 16 years old he has his first pint and the results are disast erous. Another Rite of Passage for Frank that was a tragedy instead of a happy occassion.
Frank goes to confession and for the first time feels happy. Frank's First Pint-Rite of Passage. Frank Fights with his mother. It's hard to talk but I tell her I had my first pint with Uncle Pa. No father to get me the first pint. I stagger to a chair and she says, Just like your father. I'd rather be like my father than Laman Griffin. Mind your bloody tongue.
Don't talk to me like that I'm your mother. I'll talk to you any bloddy way I like I'd rather be a messenger boy than the likes of Laman Griffin oul' drunkard with the snotty nose and his loft and people climbing up there with him I slap her on the cheek so that tears jump in her eyes and there's a small whimpering sound from her I'm a disgrace.
I hear my mother crying" Frank's Confession. Tell me what troubles you. Only if you want to. I am Father Gregory. Would you like to go to confession? God forgives all who repent. He sent His only Beloved Son to die for us.
I can't Father, I can't.
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