Frank McCourt: A Continuation

When I was a senior in high school, one of our reading requirements was Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. When our teacher told us that we would be reading an autobiography, there was a collective groan throughout the classroom. As I began reading the book I expected to be extremely bored, but I was surprised because of the entertainment that the book contained. Our teacher admonished us of the hardships that young Frank endured, and she suggested that we look at the book with humor in mind. Once you get past all of the terrible things that McCourt had to go through, there were hilarious situations and happenings in his youth. Such as the time Frank skipped school and then had to stay away from home for days because he was scared of his mother being mad at him.

When I first picked up Teacher Man, I experienced a sense of anticipation. After reading Angela’s Ashes I wanted to find out what happened to this poor Irish boy, and I was overjoyed when I found out Teacher Man was going to be on the syllabus for English 10002. McCourt’s style is very original because the whole book is like a conversation that McCourt is having with the reader, or that the reader is reading exactly what McCourt is thinking at the time. He uses no quotations and he skips large periods of time. The lack of quotations is may make it hard to read, but since I read Angela’s Ashes I was prepared for that. The large gaps in time do tend to annoy me since we have no way of knowing what happened during the years that McCourt chooses to skip.

Frank’s wife Alberta is one subject that I wish McCourt would have expanded upon. There really isn’t very much at all about her in Teacher Man. It just seems to me that when someone is married their spouse plays a big role in who they are, what their goals are, and the source of their ambitions. Maybe McCourt didn’t want a lawsuit, or maybe he only married Alberta because he didn’t think he could get anyone else to marry him. My opinion leans toward the latter. I noticed in both Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man that McCourt doesn’t have a very high self-image. He often degrades himself or talks about how he is of the lower station, he even went to far as to refer to himself as a “miserable specimen” (p.44). I don’t believe in stations in life, I believe that you can be whatever you wish to make yourself. I truly feel that Frank did make his own station; he came from the slums of Ireland to earn a degree and teach in New York.

I enjoyed reading about the stories McCourt told to his classes during his teaching career. I’m sure that his former students must feel privileged to have been taught by a now decorated author. It seemed as if McCourt liked talking about his childhood, and I do believe that he brought some knowledge to his students. Teenagers in America don’t really know what it’s like to grow up in the circumstances that McCourt did, it’s almost unfathomable to think that people, real people, actually have to live like that. I also liked the fact that McCourt stated that he also learned from his students. School age children don’t ever think that they could teach the teacher anything, and for students reading this book it brings a new perspective to the classroom setting.

Every teacher has seen their fair share of excuse notes that students bring in, and McCourt probably wasn’t the first one to notice that “honest excuse notes from parents were usually dull” (p.86). McCourt was such an excellent teacher that he