Blog Entry 5

          The topic of guilt and forgiveness is a major theme in Angela’s Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt, and is present in large amounts in the author’s life. Frank has to deal with a large amount of guilt and requests for forgiveness in his childhood, especially later near the end where he reaches puberty. A consistent recurring event that happens throughout the book is his father’s alcoholism, during which he constantly states that he will get a job and often does, but loses it after a week. His father’s feelings about this are never shown, however he does not seem to regret his actions or feel any guilt about drinking away his money. He appears to be deft at deflecting accusations, such as during his exchange with a man to get money from the IRA.

“Oh, it’s the drink you want, is it?”

“One pint is hardly drink”

“You’d walk the miles back and make the boy walk because you want a pint, wouldn’t you?”
“Walking never killed anyone” (McCourt, pg 52)

            As shown here, his father would put himself and his son through a great deal of physical and emotional turmoil for the sake of drink, but he never seems to feel the slightest regret about it. However, the topic of guilt and forgiveness really comes into play later on, during which he steals, lies, and to use the term in the book, ‘interferes’ with himself. He continuously goes to confessions out of guilt and worry at his inability to control his impulses, and later on he enters a sexual relationship with a much older woman named Theresa. Both of them cry whenever they make love, mainly because of all of the conflicting emotions inside them such as guilt and happiness. This, along with other events, eventually caused him to start crying and get noticed by a priest named Father Gregory. He confesses everything to Gregory, and the Father responds by telling him that since God has forgiven Frank, he needs to now forgive himself. Thus, McCourt incorporated the topic of forgiveness and guilt into this memoir by consistently describing how he felt after doing something, and all that provided context for his breakdown near Father Gregory. This is why the major topic in this novel is the one of guilt and forgiveness, because one of the major climaxes in the story is born out of the desire for forgiveness and the emphasis placed on the things that made the author feel guilty throughout the book.