The Library Annex

It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

Miserable, yes. For you and I, perhaps unendurable. Intolerable. Wretched. But Frank McCourt, I think, emphasizes childhood. “Childhood” highlights the injustice and tragedy for you and I. But Frank McCourt accentuates adaptibility, learning and making sense of his world. Thinking of injustice and tragedy may come later when he has a better idea of what those words mean.

I first noticed McCourt’s decision to tell his childhood story from the point of view of his then-current age. Sentence structure, perspective, questions, all presented as if the child would come inside after playing in the lane and write what happened. While entertaining – as adult readers might laugh at the absurd perspective of a child on the horrendous behavior of adults or the Angel on the Seventh Step – one must also acknowledge that the child’s perspective lacks indictment or blame. He states the facts in a way that would make Hemingway proud. He reasons through these facts not only to make sense of them but to construct his reality. There inlies the tragedy as the reader knows that the reality McCourt builds is unfair and dismal.

McCourt leaves judgement to the reader. However, I feel slight semblances of rage only during sparse times of dashed hopes. I do not judge Frank’s father or Angela. Of course, Angela’s family and the church do enough of that. I have to consider the lack of context from a young child stating facts. He does not know everything. And while I’d like to chastise his father for leaving his family to starve, I acknowledge that he has no voice with which to explain himself. I’d like to shake Angela for giving her husband so many chances or for having more babies, but she cannot tell me the social norms and ostracizing that women in her position might endure in Ireland.

Nor do I blame Frank for his behavior. As he grows into his teenage years, many of his choices – condemned by adults around him as those of a problem child – result from the sense he has made of a nonsensical world, working through hypocritical Catholic guilt and shame instilled in him at every turn.

I commend McCourt for his adjustments in storytelling as he ages. The Frank telling his story as a teenager sounds notably different from the Frank telling his story as a preschooler. But he maintains the same desire to make sense of his surroundings and build a reality in his mind. He exhibits anger and frustrations but, again, seems to avoid blame. He maintains a focus on adaptibility which leads him, ultimately, away from Ireland.

I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland.

Frank has the fortitude and determination to leave America but during his adolescent years he wants nothing more than to have a menial job. This yearning comes from his sense of manhood defined by those around him who idolize one’s first pint as a rite of passage, from a natural admiration for a father whose son looks for the best in him, and from a desperation to have something that passes for a relatively comfortable life. In this perspective perhaps we identify a cycle of downtrodden Irish into which even Frankie McCourt, the poor child with brains, can fall. And perhaps we can glean some empathy for his parents. Thankfully, Frank may be the exception rather than the rule and who are we to condemn those who aren’t strong enough to go against the rules?

He knows how it is to leave Ireland, did it himself and never got over it. You live in Los Angeles with sun and palm trees day in day out and you ask God if there’s any chance He could give you one soft rainy Limerick day.

In his early years, only those who stole his stories could upset Frank. After all, he owned little to nothing else. It seems Frank also takes ownership of his story. He does not condemn Limerick, his parents, the church or his school. For good or bad, they belong to his story and his identity. As readers, as we sail away from those Irish shores, we may say to ourselves, “Good riddance”, but this is not our story. Nor is it a treatise on being poor in Ireland. It is Frank’s story and we respect it as is.