Angela’S Ashes: Class Struggle and the Dream of Betterment

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze ‘Angela’s Ashes’ to illustrate the class struggle and its effects on the society and characters. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ is an Irish novel authored by Frank McCourt which is totally an autobiographical novel. It shows the financial and social troubles the McCourt suffer in both the United States and their homeland, Ireland.   In order to understand the title of this paper and its aims, some aspects of Marxism theory is the main theory which will be applied covertly to accomplish this goal. This philosophy significantly focuses on economic issues and class issues among the members of that society. Furthermore, this novel basically as a biographical work speaks about the class struggle and the dream of going United States that the main character of this novel pursues in his puberty. For this analysis, this paper will examine the issues of ‘Alienation’, ‘Religion’ and ‘Revolution’ based on oppression which plays a significant role in these all three issues throughout the novel. These factors will be scrutinized based on Marxism basics carefully. In the end we will come to this conclusion that Frank leave Ireland to the United States because alienation caused in Ireland due to oppression and religion on its head which leads to an revolution in his inside regarding his future life based on the experience from his past and family troubles suffered during the first nineteen yours. This analysis have been partially overlooked in the research of scholars up now even though other various definitions or theories related to Marxism like sociology or psychoanalysis have been applied for this novel.

Keywords: Marxism, class struggle, alienation, religion, oppression, preliterate.