The Ashes Effect

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I haven’t had the foggiest idea that he will become one of my favorite authors.

Frank McCourt wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning Angela’s Ashes which was published on 1997 at the age of 66. When I read it, [that was 2010 already and was by that time dead], I was amazed and moved by his novel. Reason why I liked his writings was because they were memoirs from his past which I can share mine as almost alike to that of his. His father, his mother, his siblings (though none of my siblings have died yet), his family, his past – all those were almost related to mine.

When I’m rereading his novels, I still felt like I’m reading it for the first time. The tearjerking lines that drove me from silent sobs to soft whimpers had never left me a lame instead able and hopeful heart.

Once I’m reading, I put myself at the scene as if I am literally present when the events happened that’s why I could feel the emotions in each situation he presented. McCourt was able to portray a life far different from that of the upper class men. He showed by his words how ordinary people strove hard to bring themselves on the surface and hold on in spite of the squalid, poverty-wracked life. The childhood he had was according to him, a miserable childhood. To him, happy childhood is hardly worth your while.

I have learned so much from him – on the importance of family ties, hard work, perseverance, self-confidence and most of all, the attitude of being hopeful.

Reminiscing the past, he said, “People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years.” Thank God, he survived it until his golden 78 years.

I have suffered my own life’s retribution because of some filthy actions and I’m thankful it wasn’t as worse as his. But he will stay as a person who inspired me most next to the God I served.

He says, “You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”

Through him, I’m seeing the blessing behind poverty. His works were Angela’s Ashes followed by ‘Tis [which was the last chapter’s word of the former] and last one was The Teacher Man which chronicles his life as a teacher in the New York, USA.