A Crucial Point

During my presentation I read this pivotal quote:

"I look out at Mam at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, drinking tea, and crying. I want to get up and tell her I'll be a man soon and I'll get a job in the place with the big gate and I'll come home every Friday night with money for eggs and toast and jam and she can sing Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss." (28)

This quote clearly demonstrates that, from the young and impressionable age of four, Frank understands that his father's behaviour is wrong and counterproductive to his family's wellbeing. He wants to be his mother's protector and puts a huge importance on "being a man." I saw this develop into a bit of an obsession throughout the book, and I wanted to share an important quote that proves this.

"At the end of the week Mrs. O'Connell hands me the first wages of my life, a pound, my first pound. I run down the stairs and up to O'Connell Street, the main street, where the lights are on and people are going home from work, people like me with wages in their pockets. I want them to know I'm like them, I'm a man, I have a pound. I walk up one side of O'Connell Street and down the other and hope they'll notice me. They don't. I want to wave my pound note at the world so they'll say, There he goes, Frankie McCourt the workingman, with a pound in his pocket." (314)