Blog Assignment #4 In response to Angela's Ashes

     Frank McCourt Angela's Ashes does a great job at portraying living in the slums of  Limerick Ireland from a child's perspective. Children are innocuous, gentle and adventurous little beings and in this memoir McCourt captures the reality of what is like to be a child and have no worries. This role of innocence is seen strongly in this narrative especially in the line " Dad says it's like going away on our holidays to a warmer place like Italy. That's what we'll call upstairs from how on, Italy." These are particularly powerful lines because of the circumstances that surrounds them. McCourt comes home from school with his brother to see that his entire living room had been moved upstairs due to water mixed with excretion pouring in from outside. The living room as well as the kitchen is flooded with sewage and even in this harsh reality they  were able to make light of the situation jokingly referring to the warmer upstairs and Italy. Another line in the text that shows that significance of childlike perception is "After a few streets the newspapers gone altogether and everyone can see the pig's head. His nose is flat against my chest and pointing up at my chin and I feel sorry for him because he's dead and the world is laughing at him." In these line Frank McCourt draws two lines of perception. One view is from young McCourt feeling sorry for the pig that everyone is laughing at it and the other view is that of the reader feeling sorry that McCourt is oblivious to the fact that the kids are really laughing at him.
     Frank McCourt definitely develops a sense character from early on in the passage. He's explaining his mother who is fed up with their current living space as well as a recent move. He talks us through the hassle they had of moving their furniture into the new home and having to carry it on a pram. He also says that they feel rich because they have stairs to walk up and down which is a very relatable comment. Many people believe that they have "made it" once they have a house with an upstairs and downstairs.  Regardless of the neighborhood, or how poor their family actually was, McCourt remained an oblivious little child. This grabs your attention from the start once you realize that the story is being told through the eyes of a child. Things are seen in ways that an adult will not see them.
     I believe that this particular memoir was successful simply because of its innocence. McCourt describe this events has he remembered them. Never once did he ask from sympathy or pity from anyone in his writing. If things were bad they saw the good and that was that. Nothing was ever bad enough to cause sorrow in young McCourt therefore I believed that people saw that the writing was honest and sincere.