Angela's Ashes

“Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.” - Oscar Wilde

Throughout the memoir, Angel’s Ashes, Frank starts out when he was just a small child of four years old, and already his life was filled with nothing but misery and grief. This quote by Oscar Wilde describes Oscar’s childhood very well because he experienced all four depressing emotions: misery, shame, sin, and poverty.
The poverty of the Great Depression was widely spread and affected nearly every person in America, however, what made these times of scarce food and depression caused another past time to flare up- especially in the Irish: drinking. As told in the novel Frank’s father would often waste all of his money on alcohol even though he had many children at home to feed. In essence, poverty leads to sin since when people are feeling upset about their own lives they turn to alternative sources to create happiness.
Obviously, due to Frank’s poverty and his father’s sin, his life was very miserable. The deaths of nearly all of his siblings, and the constant breakdowns of his parents forced him into being the adult, at the age of four. He was forced to pick up bits of coal off of the streets, steal food for his siblings, and attempt to stop his father from drinking all of their money away. Frank had a lot of responsibility at such a young age and since his father refused to, Frank had to carry all of the shame that came with begging.
For Christmas dinner, he has to carry the pig’s head back to the house while the townspeople laughed at him. Also, he had to complete tasks such as stealing or begging for food because his father refused to remove his pride and take care of his family. Shame seemed to be the one thing that Frank’s father would not admit to even though it was his fault that they had no money and no food. With constant death and life being beyond difficult day after day, this quote really describes how Frank lived his every day life. Poverty and sin followed him, with misery waking him up, and shame crawling around him as he waited for his father to get home from the bar, night after night.