Soldier's Garden
...me into the pool, and finding me after I hid in the closet from hide and seek. However, in Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Frank's father, Malachy McCourt, is not the usual childhood friend a son hopes for. Author shares throughout the novel about his father's drinking problem, carelessness for his family, and the lack to support his family. However, through all the faults in Malachy McCourt, Frank writes about his father without any bitterness and somewhat as a comforting man. Also, the faults in Malachy seem to motivate Frank to become a more caring and family oriented man, to never become like his father. Frank McCourt's acceptance and understanding of his father's inexplicable actions allows Frank to become a better man by learning from his mistakes and motivating him to never become like him.
Ever since Frank's childhood, Malachy McCourt was the paradigm of a horrible father, drinking away his wages, starving his children, and never caring about his family. As Frank starts out the novel saying, "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood... nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire..." (11), readers can understand how much of a misery Frank went through his childhood. Nevertheless, from this quote and throughout the novel, readers can feel his sense of good natured humor and absence of self pity. Frank never puts himself down for his father's faults or his family's misfortunes, but sees these events optimistically, as seen by the quiet humor. But as Frank says, "Two day later Dad returns from his cigarette huntÂ…...
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