Angela's Ashes

I have been reading the book Angela’s Ashes. The book at first takes place in America during a time of great poverty. This really hits the family hard so they move back to Ireland. Both Angela and Malachy are from Ireland. Malachy, the father, is from Northern Ireland, so Angela’s family often disapproves of him. This is a memoir about all of the hardships that the family has to go through in Limerick City, Ireland. It has been a very captivating, yet sad book. The family has already lost so much, three children have died and the father is an alcoholic. The experiences that this family goes through are unimaginable. They have to pick coal up off the street just to keep a fire going for the little food that they have.

I would recommend this book because Frank McCourt does an excellent job of describing the characters. He makes you feel that the characters are standing right in front of you and you are experiencing their hardships with them. It keeps you reading the book because you want to see what happens to each of these characters.

It is a very heartbreaking book, but it is also can be uplifting at the same time because you know that he will achieve success. The characters keep you emotionally attached to the book, which constantly motivates you to read it no matter how sad the theme of the book is. I believe Frank McCourt wanted the reader to be able to experience his life and go through the changes with him from childhood to adulthood.

You could compare this book to the interpretative questions for Alexis de Tocqueville’s short story Why Americans are So Restless. Alexis de Tocqueville’s argument claimed that Americans are always wanting more; in this case it was equality. Even though the McCourt family has very little money and belongings, they have the right like everyone else in Ireland to achieve success. The father often spends the dole money on pints of “black stuff,” as Frank McCourt called it as a child.

We can all learn a lesson about life, no matter the hardships that you face and the difficulties you go through, it is possible to achieve success later in life. Frank McCourt proves that everyone has an equal chance to achieve success much like Alexis de Tocqueville’s argument and in the Declaration of Independence.

So far, my experience with the book has been great, I have enjoyed the story line of Frank McCourt’s life even though it has been a struggle. The way his life was when he was a child has made the book very intriguing. 

On Studying

1.) What are some ways school encourages or discourages a person's desire to learn? What makes some objects in school exciting and stimulating and others boring.

2.) Why do human beings seek knowledge?

For some school is a way to express your knowledge and learn more. There are always new subjects to learn about, but sometimes it is hard to encourage people to actually learn the new information. Teachers try to encourage students to get interested with these topics by playing games, or using alternate teaching methods such as field trips. School can be a great place to learn, but sometimes teachers don’t realize that some of these topics can be very boring, especially if they let them. There is a difference when a teacher stands up in front of the class and lectures without any enthusiasm and no pictures to look at, from a teacher who is actively involved with their class. I have classes that there are topics that are hard to learn and the teacher is not actively engaged with their class to make the topics sound more interesting. On the other hand there are teachers who really think about how the class is really going to react with the topic, and they try to get their class actively involved so that they one retain the information and two they find the class more exciting making the process of learning more fun. One thing that occurs in many of my classes is that the teachers don’t sound as if they themselves were interested making the overall atmosphere a less of a learning environment.

Humans are naturally curious and seek knowledge. It is the reason we wake up at six in the morning and go to school everyday. As Gasset states in his short story, On Studying, that there is really no point to go to school because it is just forced upon us. Gasset later states that, “the desire does not exist unless the thing desired existed earlier, in reality or at least in imagination.”  One has to have the desire to learn in order to gain knowledge. We are constantly at competition with one another and knowledge is one way were we can “outdo” one another. It is assumed that the smartest in our world have already achieved the greatest knowledge, but in reality, we are always learning new things. We are constantly learning more and more and retaining it all, but all that knowledge goes away when we die. We have seen many people in our society that are very smart, but the only way their success in gained is how they apply the gained knowledge. It is seen in our everyday lives, the more knowledge that is applied the better the life. Everyone strives to gain knowledge, because it may lead to a successful and good life.

School is something that broadens your mind and helps you gain knowledge about your past, which in turn helps you with the present and future. This is why we go to school, to gain the knowledge we need for our life skills, and hopefully we will be encouraged from our peers to look deeper into subjects that may not always be appealing to us.